The Little Friend

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About this listen

The second novel by Donna Tartt, best-selling author of The Goldfinch (winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize), The Little Friend is a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil.

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later, Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated.

So it is that Robin's sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson - sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss.

Filled with hairpin turns of plot and "a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens" (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

Donna TarttLaurel LefkowAudible Studios

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Fiction

Scary

Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Scary

Editor reviews

Winner of the WH Smith Literary Awards 2003, The Little Friend is written by Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt, with an audiobook narration by the brilliant voice artist Laurel Lefkow. A little boy is found murdered in the front garden of his Mississippi town, the mystery of his death never solved. His sister is the only person who delves deep into the very roots of the community to uncover his killer. This novel is all at once gripping, tense, suspenseful and addictive. It is the work of a master writer. Available now from Audible.

Critic reviews

"A dazzling tour de force” ( Daily Mail)
"Beautifully written and immaculately crafted ... even though there's humour, the tension is palpable. Unputdownable” ( Daily Mirror)
"Harriet is one of the most engaging and rounded characters you are likely to find ... gorgeous, fluent, visual." ( The Times)

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Any additional comments?

Donna Tartt gifts us with a wonderful piece of literature every decade, each time leaving readers hungrier and hungrier for more of her ingenious storytelling that often leaves us feeling positively mesmerised for another ten years.

This book is a cleverly written account told through a child's eyes around experiencing the most heinous and atrocious crime that any parent could imagine: the death/murder of a young child. Harriet, who was only a baby when her young brother was found hanging from a noose from a tree in the back garden, takes us on a mesmerising journey in search of justice for her brother's death.

Throughout childhood and early adulthood Harriet is determined to find the killer. Always being dubbed as the black sheep of the family, she is relentless in her search and isn't bothered about other people's feelings towards the subject. She isn't afraid to talk about her brother's death to many who buried this shocking tragedy many many years ago..

I couldn't help but admire her ferocity. I was often in admiration of her courage and sheer passionate determination to avenge her brother's death by bringing the individual to justice.

Intriquetely written, you can really see why it took Tartt 10 years to write this. You're taken on a journey of the mind and experience the sheer tragedy of someone who lost a member of family they barely remember, but so desperately love. The question is, who is the killer?