Last year, I decided to
reread a book from a few years back, one that I felt deserved another chance
after my first thoughts felt a bit swift and unformed, and it was a success
with my opinion of Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle changing drastically. That
happened again this year when I decided to reread Donna Tartt’s sophomore novel
The Little Friend. Too bad it is the other way around, since I came away from
this novel disliking it much more than I did the first time. I feel a lot of my
discontent with this novel has to do with feelings for her other two novels,
The Secret History and, more importantly, The Goldfinch. Each book is a modern
classic, the works of a writer who is miles ahead of many writers working today
at a level they wish they could function, and The Little Friend, a boring book
of dry academic origin masquerading as a southern gothic thriller, makes the
experience real hard to swallow. I won’t get into the plot so much, since I
already have a written review somewhere on my blog, but I will talk about my
few likes and a few of my many dislikes as I was reading this. The opening is
awesome, where the decaying Dufrense family finally crumbles when they find the
dead body of the Robin, the prized grandson, hanging from a tree next to there
house. It is a feeling that doesn’t last long though, as the next 500 pages
become dry and monotonous as Tartt writes about low people in a way that comes
off as showboating, which is beneath her, and while I like Harriet, and even
Hely, her male admirer which, as a testament to Tartt’s unparalleled skill to
make him real and not a caricature, no one comes off as anything but superfluous.
I feel Tartt is out of her element here trying to write about the place she
grew up, but it doesn’t feel like her place at all, and this is one blemish on
a career that will be rightfully remembered for ages.
Rating: 2/5
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