The Little Friend
Updated: Aug 8
A sprawling, ambitious story, The Little Friend weaves a dense, broad, and rich tapestry that for half of its length threatens to come undone by the myriad threads it works to maintain. For pages upon pages, I worried that nothing would come but setting and backdrop—and then, almost without warning, everything began to coalesce. Was all that exposition necessary? Probably not, and some judicious editing may have done some good. But in keeping with the rich southern Gothic literary tradition that Donna Tartt is certainly a part of, the story is as much about the journey—and the mood it sets—as the destination. In this respect, Tartt has crafted a worthy successor to her first novel, The Secret History, which remains one of my favorite works of fiction. And, I might add, the warning I was given by a friend so many years ago that this book went nowhere is simply, and satisfyingly, untrue.
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