"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
The Cleves--Charlotte, Grandma Edith, Great Aunt Adelaide, Aunts Libby and Tat--are a southern family of noble stock but, by the early 1970s, diminished numbers and wealth; haunted by the motiveless, unsolved murder of 9-year-old Robin, "their dear little Robs", a decade earlier. (The novel opens, a la Bunny's corpse in The Secret History, with his body found hanging from a black-tupelo tree in the garden: "the toes of his limp tennis shoes dangled six inches above the grass.") Harriet, Charlotte's youngest child, "neither sweet nor pretty" like her sister, Allison, but "smart" was a baby when Robin died. Now a precocious, bookish pre-teen, she is convinced she can unravel the mystery of his death. Her chief suspects are the Ratliffs, a local clan of speed-dealing ne'er-do-wells, one of whom, Danny, had been in Robin's class. (The Ratliffs own sorry histories, and in particular the corrosive influence of matriarch Gum, are tidily juxtaposed throughout the book with the varying fortunes of the Cleves.) Harriet enlists Hely, her willing schoolyard disciple, to help investigate.
For a while the novel takes on a positively Nancy Drew-esque hue; Harriet and Hely the spies, sneaking into buildings, making off with poisonous snakes and escaping from drug-addled trailer trash on bicycles. In a significant departure from The Secret History though, Tartt does not seem unduly concerned about plot and, or, pacing. She's interested in characterisation and the bickering aunts and so many of the minor characters, the odious car dealer Mr Dial, for example, "all rectitude and pickiness, sweet moral outrage itself", are realised wonderfully. This isn't to say it's not well plotted; it is, as the dénouement eventually reveals, but it is rather languid and things can get a bit soggy midway. (Overuse of the adjective "stolidly", a word that unavoidably, if quite erroneously, calls to mind heavy fruitcake, doesn't really help either.) Tartt's Southern Gothic saga may lack the page-turning thrill of her last novel but it's, ultimately, a no less impressive or rewarding work of fiction. --Travis Elborough
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # ABE-1697639359889
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781400031696
Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 9781400031696
Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. 1.01. Seller Inventory # 1400031699-2-1
Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch comes an utterly riveting novel set in Mississippi of childhood, innocence, and evil. Destined to become a special kind of classic. The New York Times Book ReviewThe setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mothers Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents yard. Twelve years later Robins murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robins sister Harrietunnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her towns rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her familys history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent. Growing up in a small Mississippi town in a family haunted by the murder of her brother, Robin, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes lives in a world of her imagination, until, at the age of 12, she decides to find Robin's murderer and exact her revenge. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781400031696
Book Description Condition: New. . Seller Inventory # 52GZZZ010DYO_ns
Book Description Condition: New. pp. 640. Seller Inventory # 261058357
Book Description PAP. Condition: New. New Book. Shipped from UK. Established seller since 2000. Seller Inventory # WB-9781400031696
Book Description paperback. Condition: New. Language: ENG. Seller Inventory # 9781400031696