The Little Friend, Donna Tartt (Knopff, 2002) ****

 

Donna Tartt wrote her first novel, The Secret History, about murders at a small Vermont college, ten years ago and it soon became a cult classic among college students.  The Little Friend is her second novel, and takes place in a small Southern town, where old plantation mansions decay and most of the people live near the poverty level.  The main character is Harriet, a twelve-year old tomboy who is antisocial but very bright and endowed with an overly vivid imagination.

 

Harriet was only a baby when her nine-year old bother was found hanging from a tree in the family’s backyard.  Twelve years later, her mother is still in shock, her father has essentially abandoned them, and her older sister won’t discuss it.  Harriet decides to play detective and sets out to find the murderer.  With the help of a classmate, Hely, an ardent James Bond fan, she narrows her search to a redneck druggie, Danny Ratliff, whose family deals in drugs and lives in the worst part of her small southern town. What follows is a dangerous series of misadventures during which she plots and then tries to carry out the murder of Danny Ratliff and is very nearly the victim of a murder herself.

 

The story is told from various points of view, usually Harriet’s, but sometimes Danny’s, as well as some of the other characters.  In places it might remind you of To Kill a Mockingbird where family values and social strata are important; in other places there are shades of Stephen King and even Faulkner.  It’s a long novel and begins rather slowly, meticulously setting the scene and rounding out the characters, but the pace picks up and you’ll reach a point in the novel where you’re willing to skip a meal or go to bed later than usual to see what happens next.