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r/donnatartt•
Notebookspells

I just got done reading The Little Friend. I have some thoughts. (Spoilers)

Spoiler

So I absolutely loved The Secret History when I read it. So much so that I went ahead and got The Little Friend. I was very excited about reading it, and I became very interested in Donna Tartt as an artist as well. Saw all of her interviews on Youtube and whatnot... I even read David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (Which I absolutely loved) because of how much Donna praised him...

To say that I am disappointed with The Little Friend is an understatement. I think it is probably the biggest disappointment in terms of books that I have ever had. I don't want to speak badly of Donna Tartt, because I respect her, I really do, but I am slightly irritated that I wasted my time on this book. Has anyone on here read it and actually liked it?

Harriett as a main character is terrible, compared to Richard from The Secret History. I felt no love for her, and by the end I was hoping she would die somehow. Same goes for Hely. All of the other characters are like caricatures... The drug addicts in the book are not believable at all, the Aunts are boring and have no personality...

I read a quote from a mainstream publication that compared the characters to Charles Dickens' characters and this couldn't be further from the truth. Like it actually angers me. There are a ton of quotes from The New York Times and other publications praising the book on the back cover and I just don't understand it.

Can anyone tell me why this book gets the praise it does? Am I just looking at it from the wrong perspective? And why is it called The Little Friend? Does it refer to Hely? Or what is it? I just don't get it, and yeah, I don't know, I'm angry I wasted my time with this. Such a letdown. And after the brilliance of The Secret History.

I was thinking of reading the Goldfinch after this but I think i'm going to pass. I'm sorry for making this a negative post, but I'm just hoping to get some answers here, I feel like I was duped. And robbed of my money.

I'm sorry Donna...

Posted May 5, 2023, 8:34 AM UTC

721
zerosuitstace•

You should still 100% read the Goldfinch. I don't know if it's as good as the Secret History because I read Goldfinch first and I absolutely have a soft spot for it.

As for The Little Friend: the name gets me too. I slogged through this book because I was like "it has to all mean something!" I'm still as confused as ever.

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I_SuplexTrains•

The Little Friend is none other than the effective deuteragonist, Danny. The only time the words "little friend" appear in sequence in the text is near the end when Harriet's father shockingly reveals that Danny was not Robin's bitter enviant after all but rather his "little friend."

1
seven-of-9•

My interpretation, as a huge Donna Tartt fan:

I view TLF as Donna Tartt experimenting and pushing the written form in a completely different way to TSH. In Secret History, she focuses on a tighter plot, a short time scale, and complex characters who are all reacting to something isolated and relatively small that happens to them in a restricted time period, and how that singular event affects them for the rest of their lives. In TLF, she's also looking at the effect of a singular event (Robin's death), but it's on a much broader time scale, and how it infiltrates every part of this family. I personally find the character of Charlotte to be a complete masterpiece, a portrayal of how the loss of a child is a grief that stays with you for your entire life. She is a neglectful parent to Harriett, but my heart bled for her reading her wallow in this pool of sadness for the entire book. She also explores this theme in The Goldfinch, with every decision Theo makes and the entire course of his life changed and affected by the death of his mother. There are also a bunch of other themes of course around race and drug use, on a second reading I was particuarly struck by the theme of classism in drug use, and what kind of drug use is criminalised and frowned upon and what isn't.

Just some late night ramblings, TSH is still my absolute favourite but I really love all three of her novels :)

6
katnip_fl•

I enjoyed the book. I read it a long time ago, so I don’t remember much about the story, but I think it’s just Donnas writing that I like. I actually enjoyed it and The Goldfinch more than The Secret History.

2
NotebookspellsOP•

Really? You enjoyed The Little Friend more than The Secret History? Interesting... and fair enough... Why do you think it's called The Little Friend?

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emilxmf•

They enjoyed the Goldfinch more than The Secret History, not The Little Friend

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Whitemagickz•

I would still highly recommend reading The Goldfinch. If TLF was an attempt to stray away from the writing style she used in TSH, TGF is a return to form. It parallels TSH in its structure quite a bit, and I found it to be just as enjoyable. In fact, Francis even makes a small cameo near the end of the book. I struggled similarly with TLF, to the point that I couldn’t finish it, so I imagine we’ll have similar experiences.

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NotebookspellsOP•

Yeah, I probably will read the Goldfinch... Just because I still believe in Donna Tartt as a writer... Maybe The Little Friend will grow on me too... I just remember how amazed I was when I finished reading The Secret History and how disappointed I was when I finished reading The Little Friend... I literally could not wait for it to be over...

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Whitemagickz•

I think you’ll be (pleasantly) surprised at how much The Goldfinch feels like The Secret History in spite of their dissimilar plots. I personally favor The Goldfinch over The Secret History, though that may be owing to my having read The Goldfinch first.

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NotebookspellsOP•

Nice... yeah honestly this subreddit has convinced me to read The Goldfinch so I will... I'm thinking of reading some Dickens first, and then i'll read The Goldfinch... That's another thing I'm grateful to Donna about, introducing me to Dickens... Which has become one of if not my favorite author...

1
Paulbearraw•

Don’t pass on goldfinch

I hated little friend but loved others esp GF

2
19Stavros•

LOVED The Secret History - one of my top.books of all time and I re-read it every so often. Read the Goldfinch once, finished it but don't feel compelled to ever read again. Have tried, several times to read the Little Friend but just can't get past the first 100 pages or so. Maybe will try again after this thread.

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NotebookspellsOP•

You know... The Little Friend is unlike any book I've ever read... Which can be a good thing and a bad thing... I've never felt like I understand what an author was trying to do in a book less so than in The Little Friend... Because I know how good of a writer Donna is, mainly from reading The Secret History... So I know she was probably trying to do something here with The Little Friend... It can't have been ONLY a novel, because in that sense it completely fails... So I'm not sure if she was going for something else... Was she trying to evoke specific emotions? Was she trying to create a mood? I wonder if this is a literally equivalent to ambient music? It truly puzzles me... and I feel bad sometimes for having criticized Donna so negatively here, but the truth is when I finished reading the book I felt real anger, for having wasted my time with it, when I could have been reading a Dickens novel or something else... Anyway... I'm still torn on whether to read the Goldfinch or not...

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katnip_fl•

As I said, I read it a long time ago. I have no idea why it was called The Little Friend.

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NotebookspellsOP•

Oh you have no idea? Yeah, neither do I... Only Donna knows probably...

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here-i-am-now•

The little friend is Robin the little boy that was hanged.

The entire story is about how people react to unexpected tragedy. You get the perspective from someone who is too young to truly understand (Harriett) as well as a slightly older youth (Allison) as well as the parents, and other adults.

Wasn’t aware this was supposed to be a type of mystery.

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NotebookspellsOP•

I don't think it is necessarily supposed to be a type of mystery, but I do think it is supposed to be a good book... and Donna has said reading should be fun, and reading The Little Friend was not fun at all...

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Frequent-Recipe-3507•

I’m pretty sure there is a line where Hely is referred to as Harriet’s “little friend” so I assumed it was him

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oldlesshotradio•

The title is also referring to Danny. This is only revealed at the end of the book, after Harriet believes she has taken care of her brother’s murderer, only to find out (by listening to her parents conversation) that Danny was Robin’s “little friend” (they use those exact words), which is a pivotal moment in the story because it reveals to Harriet how wrong/naive she was in her impression of the events.

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Cuban_Gringo•

As I don't know how to do 'spoiler' text, simpler to say that on sites such as GoodReads, there is information that explicitly says who is 'the little friend.' If you wanted to explore the various suggestions people have as to the resolution of the novel then many have added their ideas on that point as well.

I started The Little Friend a number of times but was commuting at the time and simply never got all that far. But, when I had some time to actually devote to the book then it really did become something I appreciated and thought it was a rather terrific book.

The Little Friend, at least to me, is all about the stories and myths we both tell and create to make sense of our lives. The references to Scott and failure while, at the same time, such failures still being a success are key points that - much like the epigrammatic reference to Camus and the absurd in the The Goldfinch - are hints that a resolution is never going to be found or offered. Robin's death is always going to be unresolved and Harriet with never establish the sense of narrative justice as we might expect by finding the killer and restoring meaning to the world.

Myth, narrative and meaning are implicated as key points right from the get-go when we have people blaming themselves for small adjustments to routines, habits, etc as key causes for Robin's death; we strive to make meaning from meaningless patterns.

But I won't write an essay in its defence: I liked the book quite a lot and I do think it offers something really interesting to say even though most seem to take the lack of resolution as a failure of structure. I think it's imperative to the whole issue of the book. No meaning, no resolution. We instead create meaning - as Harriet did - rather than face the more brutal reality.

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NotebookspellsOP•

You bring up some interesting points. If I look at it more as a kind of experimental novel, or just experimental writing, maybe I can see some value in it. As a novel though, I just wasn't satisfied... I feel like the story falls short for how good Donna Tartt writes if that makes sense... Another thing that makes absolutely no sense is how Harriett and Hely could have thought that a kid as young as robin could have hanged him... I know they are kids and kids have wild imaginations but I just don't buy it... it makes absolutely no sense that Danny at Robin's age when he died could have had the strength to pull something like that off... There are a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense to me in the novel... Also when they throw the snake into the car, that is so wild and improbable... I just don't think she focused enough on the actual story choosing instead to focus on the mood and the stylized writing, which I think is to the detriment of the novel... The Secret History works much much better...

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Beautiful_Hold1879•

I was equally disappointed in TLF when I first read it in 2002. The Secret History has been a favorite of mine for 30 years and I was excited to read TLF. It was not what I was expecting. But that might have been my problem: having expectations.

I think Donna suffered from the sophomore slump, which is tough considering she put ten years into it. The prose is wonderful, but the characters fall flat. I think it was critically heralded because, frankly, it had Donna's name on it. She is a truly gifted writer, but this is one that didn't come together. And to not find out who killed Robin and why made me want to hurl the book across the room.

What I do suggest is reading The Goldfinch. It makes up so much for what was lost in TLF. It's beautifully crafted, even if it is a bit overwrought in the description department. It won the Pulitzer, not that that should matter of course. Still, give it a shot. I haven't read TLF in 20 years and now I wonder if I'll have a different take on it; perhaps I'll pick it up again.

1
MBCpy•

I enjoyed both books, but the secret history a massive amount more - you should still read the goldfinch however. TLF is written in a much more complex way, switching perspectives between characters, which is why you probably didn’t love Harriet as much - her perspective and ideas were just not as important as Richards to the Secret History. I’ve started the Goldfinch and I think it’s more similar to SH in the way that it is first person, converges on one main character and his development etc.

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NotebookspellsOP•

Ok, well I might read it. I was honestly planning on reading it right after finishing The Little Friend, but I decided not to. For now, I'm sticking with Dickens. I want to read all of his novels in chronological order, and then I might read The Goldfinch. I just find it hard to believe that anything Donna writes will ever top The Secret History. There is literally something magical about it. And it probably has the best ending to a book ever in my opinion. Just amazing. It's almost as if she made The Little Friend as an antithesis to The Secret History.

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