The Little Friend

I finally finished Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. What a chore. I really enjoyed her first novel, The Secret History. TSH was a suspenseful, tight novel, that was easy to read in a weekend, TLF is anything but.

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The whole book is centered around the mysterious murder of a nine-year-old boy, Robin, who is the brother of our protagonist, Harriet. She spends the whole book chasing Danny Ratliff, a boy her brother's age, who she thinks is the murderer. We also spend time with the terribly stereotypical trailer-living Ratliff family. Some reviews I read claimed the novel to be overarching and marvelous, that it teaches us all something about ourselves. The truth is that the plot is boring (there are a few sections of suspense, but they are few and far between) and the prose is dull. I was never struck by any turn of phrase or any setting of scene. I was not attached to our main character (who, when described, conveniently resembles the severe picture of the author on the book jacket), nor anyone else, and I've never been so glad to finish a book in my life. I threw it across the couch.