The Little Friend

SPOILERS. A few months ago, my mom read Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. She raved about the book and how much she loved it, and shortly after she read Tartt's The Little Friend. She kept telling me that I needed to read both the books and I finally read The Little Friend. What a book! It's one of those books that makes you think and question. It's a long book but so worth the read.

First, I want to talk about Tartt's style of writing. Let me start by mentioning that the book is 555 pages long but has only 7 chapters and a prologue. That makes for seriously long chapters sometimes. On top of that, the perspective jumps from character to character. I actually liked that in this case, though, as there are so many characters and so much happening all at once. It allowed you to see across the board and get to know all of the characters, which is important as the story goes along. I had a little trouble getting used to her writing at first, as some of the sentences were a little disjointed. Also, several of the characters either daydream a lot or get lost in memory, and sometimes you're not sure what is a dream and what is actually happening.

So, what is the story all about? Well, Harriet's brother, Robin, was lynched when he was 9 and she was only a baby. Her sister, Allison, was 4 at the time and outside when it happened but can't remember anything. Robin's death totally destroyed their mother and changed the whole family forever. The story takes place when Harriet is 12 and she desperately wants to know who killed her brother. She starts investigating and gets it into her head that Danny Ratliff, a somewhat friend of Robin's, is the person behind the murder. This sets off the whole story and gets Harriet into a world of trouble.

Harriet tries to get answers out of her sister, Allison, and her grandmother and 3 great-aunts. No one wants to talk about Robin's death, as everyone loved him. His memory has been completely immortalized by the family but they don't like to talk about his death. Once Harriet decides that Danny Ratliff killed Robin, she starts following him with the help of her friend Hely, whose older brother was also a friend of Robin's. And this is where things start to get interesting. It's hard to explain everything that happens in a 555 page novel in only a few paragraphs so I'm only going to touch upon a few things.

The Ratliffs. My goodness does this family need serious help. All of the sons have been in jail, except the youngest who is retarded. The family is basically white trash so they're looked down upon without adding the jail time to the situation. And the grandmother is absolutely crazy. She's mean in a conniving way and eggs her grandsons on, causing fights all the time. Plus, she is constantly "sick and dying" but never actually dies. Farish is literally crazy and was actually institutionalized at one point. He cooks meth, and uses it a little too often, and is beyond paranoid about everything. Eugene is crazy religious and for a time hangs out with a preacher who handles snakes, which plays a major part later on. And Danny is stuck in this family and wants out but can't leave. You believe, like Harriet, that he probably killed Robin. You want him to get caught and get what he deserves. But then you start to know him and realize he actually was friends with Robin and was very upset by his death. But his family beat that out of him and he bragged about killing Robin. In the end, you pity Danny. He's not perfect, but you also don't want Harriet to succeed in killing him.

Which is her plan all along. Harriet wants to kill Danny because she thinks he killed Robin and she wants revenge for the brother she never knew. Although she's the "main character" it doesn't take long to realize that Harriet isn't all right either. Really, no one in the whole novel is. Harriet has no proof that Danny killed Robin but she is adamant that he did and goes to great lengths to kill him. She breaks into Eugene's apartment to steal one of the visiting preacher's snakes, which she and Hely then throw over an overpass onto Danny's Trans Am as it drives by. However, Danny's grandmother is the one driving the car and almost dies. Life lesson: when driving under an overpass in a convertible, beware of falling snakes. Harriet then decides to shoot Danny, which doesn't happen. Instead, he almost drowns her in a water tower, where paranoid Farish had hidden his meth. Harriet manages to escape but Danny, who can't swim, ends up in the water tower. He survives for 2 days, before being rescued and admitting to killing Farish, who he'd shot because Farish was really starting to lose it and Danny wanted to get away.

In the end, Danny is on his way back to prison and Farish is dead. Hely still believes the sun shines upon Harriet and her every deed. And no one suspects Harriet of anything, except epilepsy. The story ends with her in the hospital after having a seizure when she returned home from the water tower incident. The doctors believe she has epilepsy and that's it for her. It's a way to explain away her reaction to the water tower incident, her vomiting and blackout. She almost gets away with murder, expect Danny actually survives and she also begins to realize that Danny and Robin were actually friends and that Danny didn't kill Robin.

Some people don't like the ending. They think that Harriet's epilepsy is a cop out. However, I do think there's something wrong with her because she more than any character had vivid daydreams and seemed to zone out and go into her own world. It seems that Harriet, her sister, and her mother all have a loose grip on reality sometimes. I don't know if Harriet actually has epilepsy but I think there are problems. The other problem people have with the ending is that Robin's killer is never revealed. Honestly, I went into the book expecting that we would never know who killed Robin. How could we? It's been 12 years since his death and no one ever had any clue who did it, so how is a 12 year old girl supposed to figure it out? I think the open ending is part of what makes the book so good and what keeps you thinking about it after you've finished it.

And it really is a good book. It touches upon class issues, between blacks, whites and white trash. It shows you how dark life can really be and how easy it can be to get mixed up in something very dangerous. And while it's a little slow at first, once things start happening they just happen all at once. It's not an easy read, in that the subject material is not always pleasant and the issues throughout the novel are not happy. Death, lynching, murder, drugs, abuse. The novel is dark. But it still captures your attention and doesn't let go.