The murder of Harriet Cleve Dufresnes’s older brother Robin, who was found hanging from a tree in the backyard, still remains a mystery twelve years later. The conflicting reality of the tragedy impacts Harriet one summer as she finds herself engrossed with the works of adventure writers like Kipling and Stevenson. Driven by unanswered questions that left her and her family shattered years ago – even today, as their mother remains enveloped in grief through hoarding and medication, which has caused immense neglect on her behalf – Harriet becomes determined to uncover the truth. Believing that members of the Ratliff family, a highly dysfunctional family also from Alexandria, Mississippi may be responsible, Harriet sets out with Hely, a neighborhood friend. The mystery must be solved.
An encounter with a particular snake only reminds them of the hidden and oftentimes unexpected malevolent things in life. It is a crucial turning point as the doors to their childhood naivety begins to close. Their endeavors are far from child-like and are much darker than they may have expected, uncovering somber truths about life – a life filled with loss, crime, and psychological turmoil. Some characters are tough-minded, believing life is lived in a dog-eat-dog world. Other characters who experience grief and tragedy respond by neglecting their life and loved ones. Harriet comes to the realization that something strangles us as we get older, as if Death grips us when we are alive, making bits and pieces of us harden in response to the cruel realities that are out there to meet us.
The Little Friend is more than Harriet’s search for the mysterious answers behind her brother’s tragic end. At its heart, it is a novel about childhood and the evil we experience upon leaving it. Racism, tragedy, neglect, naivety, and growth fill the pages as the novel follows the characters, revealing how such a tragic death affects the people left behind. The candor of reality jumps off the pages. Donna Tartt’s descriptions of the characters’ internal accounts is immensely intriguing.
Although the opening lines of the prologue seem to set up the novel as a murder mystery, that is not what this novel is. The mysterious nature of Robin’s death fills the opening pages of the book, yet Tartt focuses not on who killed him but on how the murder has affected the characters. Indomitable, opinionated, and clever, Harriet faces situations involving injustice, tragedy, drug abuse, isolation, and familial dysfunction, coming to the realization that the world is not black and white but inherently gray. Her pursuits lead her to realize, contrarily, the figurative murder of adults in our world. Maybe Robin’s death is not the only one to consider.
The book, therefore, is not a murder mystery; rather, it is a coming of age tale combined with gothic horror and murder mystery elements. If readers go into this novel thinking that they will get a thriller and a typical puzzle-piece murder mystery. . . disappointment may ensue. That lens will lead to thinking the plot is underdeveloped, the ending is anticlimactic, and the story overall lacks direction. While that is slightly true, and I found myself wondering if a cluster of pages I had just read really went anywhere, that isn’t the purpose of the novel. The ambiguity about the plot and crime is a bit frustrating – nevertheless, when remembering that character study is a large part of Tartt’s purpose, I found the novel to be well worth the read. What hooked me is that when I thought I was going to get a guide to Robin’s murder, I got a guide to the figurative murder of a human adult instead. I wanted a novel that focused on the internal development of the characters; this book achieved that. Tartt does an amazing job of using the plot as a source of immense character development. I have hardly read many novels in which the crime is put in the background, but Tartt’s choice in doing so is a captivating endeavor. The novel and its overall storytelling nonetheless remains nothing short of stellar.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars