---
product_id: 3522982
title: "The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)"
price: "€ 30.63"
currency: EUR
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reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.hr/products/3522982-the-little-friend-a-novel-vintage-contemporaries
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---

# Richly detailed Southern US setting #1,126 in Literary Fiction - critically acclaimed 624 pages of immersive storytelling The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

**Price:** € 30.63
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## Summary

> 📖 Unlock the Southern mystery that everyone’s whispering about — don’t miss out on this literary rite of passage!

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- **What is this?** The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
- **How much does it cost?** € 30.63 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.hr](https://www.desertcart.hr/products/3522982-the-little-friend-a-novel-vintage-contemporaries)

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## Key Features

- • **Epic Length, Epic Depth:** Dive into 624 pages of masterful prose that reward patient readers with a richly layered narrative.
- • **Authentic Southern Atmosphere:** Experience a vivid portrayal of 1960s Mississippi, capturing social tensions and complex characters with cinematic clarity.
- • **A Story That Defies Expectations:** Not your average murder mystery—embrace a narrative that challenges conventions and leaves a lasting impression.
- • **Critically Acclaimed Literary Gem:** Ranked #1,126 in Literary Fiction, this novel is a must-have for discerning readers craving substance over fluff.
- • **Complex, Unforgettable Protagonist:** Follow Harriet, a fiercely intelligent and indomitable young heroine whose quest defies typical mystery tropes.

## Overview

Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend is a 624-page literary novel set in 1960s Mississippi, blending a murder mystery backdrop with a deep exploration of grief, social dynamics, and a fiercely independent young protagonist. Ranked among the top literary fiction titles, it offers richly detailed storytelling that challenges conventional genre expectations and rewards readers who crave complexity and atmospheric depth.

## Description

The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) [Donna Tartt] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

Review: One of the Best Books I've Ever Read - Had I paid any attention to the reviews at either Goodreads or desertcart, I might have been dissuaded from reading The Little Friend by those who didn't like the book, calling it "boring", "too long", "bad ending". That would have been a sad thing, because I'm putting it in that Difficult-to-Get-Into club of mine called "One of the Best Books I've Ever Read". It's very hard for me to see this as anything less than a 5-star book, so let me try to convince you readers who are contemplating reading it but are on the fence because of the book's detractors. However, let me temper that with a caution to those who want a quick read, a tied-up-in-a-bow ending, or who aren't willing to get deep into a character and the character's milieu---if you are one of those, go with a John Grisham. The paperback edition I read was a hefty 624-pages, and I savored every one of them. The editor's description of The Little Friend (TLF) will lead you to believe that this is a murder mystery, and perhaps that's why some readers are ticked off that it lacks the typical and expected structure of a murder mystery. In fact, that's likely what enticed me to buy it. But while TLF does, indeed, begin with a mystery---the 12-year old, unsolved murder of the brother of the main character, Harriet. The mystery is also the impetus for the quest that is the book's focus. But the mystery is simply the background and jumping off place. This is really a story about Harriet, one of the most compelling characters I've ever encountered; the town where the story takes place (Alexandria, Mississippi); and the recently desegregated and deeply racist social climate in which the action occurs. Harriet was a baby when her brother, Robin, is murdered. When we meet her 12 years later, she's like an urchin from a Dickens' story. If it were not for the inconsistent and eclectic parenting she receives from the family's African-American housekeeper, her stern and cold grandmother, and a gaggle of great-aunts, Harriet would be just a step away from being raised by wolves. Her mother has been in a drug-induced slumber since the day of the murder, and her father lives in Nashville and only visits on holidays. Harriet is an old soul. She's intelligent, indomitable, opinionated, delightfully odd, and very well-read. The tales of Kipling, Stevenson, Doyle, and those of true-life adventurers fuel her imagination. A summer without the structure and diversion of school, and the general lack of parental supervision the children receive, provide a fertile ground in which Harriet and her devoted acolyte, Hely, set out to find Robin's killer. But, again, though it's an important one, this "detecting" is simply the backstory. TLF's prologue is one of the best I've ever read. It begins: "For the rest of her life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son's death because she had decided to have the Mother's Day dinner at six in the evening instead of noon, which is when the Cleves usually had it." Its 15 pages concisely and brilliantly provide us with everything we need to know to prepare us for the rest of the story. We clearly understand the family dynamics and a bit of its history. We meet many of the characters and, in very few words, we learn a lot about each one of them. We know the horrific event that forever after alters the family and sets in motion its disintegration. But from that point forward, each subsequent chapter is minutely detailed. Many readers found that maddening, but others, like me, loved and appreciated those details. I found myself rereading passages to savor them, and noticing now beautifully crafted and essential all those lovely words were. One of the things that I found the most amazing was how well Tartt captured the time and place: the casual and cruel racism, the decaying town, the cadence and sound of the voices across the spectrum of social classes; and the thinking of the children: their fertile imaginations, their terrible decisions, the pains they must endure at the hands of the careless and unthinking adults who rule their worlds. My early childhood was spent in a small Missouri town in the 1950s, and Tartt's descriptions brought back the sights, sounds, and feelings (both physical and emotional) of that time and place. Other reviewers have compared TLF to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I was also making those comparisons. But to be clear, TLF by no means mimics those books---it holds its own and is unique in its voice, but it shares the keen sense of place and the uncanny understanding of the characters' interior lives that those other books have. Many reviewers complained about the book's ending. I'm trying not to spoil it for readers by what I'm going to say next, so if you are even a tad concerned about that, stop reading this review now. The ending is not all tied up in a bow, with the author going over clues we should have picked up on, and detailing for us why the killer did what he/she did. If you are expecting such an ending, this book won't deliver. But I contend that Tartt wrote the perfect ending for this particular book. It's is purposefully and carefully written, and A Little Friend would be a completely different book with anything but the ending Tartt gives us. I believe that the Prologue and ending are a pair of perfectly matched bookends. I loved this book and highly recommend it for people who want beautifully written prose and a whopping good story. I'm in awe of Donna Tartt's talent and insight into the human spirit, and immensely glad I found her. I'm reading Tartt's The Secret History next.
Review: A stranger, darker, better cousin to The Goldfinch - "The Little Friend is set in the American South. It starts with a grisly murder of a 9-year-old boy. More than a decade later, his younger sister vows to find and punish the perpetrator." Frankly, I'm tempted to leave it at that, and let you discover the chameleonic nature of the book by yourself. Because, y'see, The Little Friend is nothing like its more acclaimed successor that you've probably read first. Despite the troubled protagonist, dark undertones and numerous plot zigzags, you somehow knew from the very first pages that The Goldfinch was a straightforward redemption tale headed towards the inevitable happy ending. With The Little Friend, you're never sure. It starts as a murder mystery (which it definitely is not), then turns into a tale of revenge, then morphs into something else entirely. Its heroine, Harriet, is a brilliant, resourceful, stubborn and independent teenage girl, but her grief and obsession with revenge eventually make her into a much more... complicated character. Its finale, while pretty uneventful compared to that of The Goldfinch, somehow seems much more definitive. I'd really hate to be more specific about the plot or even technical details, and spoil the numerous ways the book screws with your assumptions. I just want to add a word of warning: just as The Goldfinch contains too many overly lengthy and dull passages, this book contains many characters that contribute little to the story and plotlines that are not resolved in any meaningful way. It annoyed me quite a lot, but after finishing the novel, I sort of started seeing it as a feature, not a bug: every false trail and every shaggy dog subplot contribute to the point that in our search for the right answers, for the solution to a mystery, for closure we may miss a grander truth. So if you find yourself put off by the book's seeming incoherence, try to persevere. It's worth it.

## Features

- Great product!

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #24,007 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #1,126 in Literary Fiction (Books) #1,733 in American Literature (Books) #7,621 in Genre Literature & Fiction |
| Customer Reviews | 3.9 out of 5 stars 7,615 Reviews |

## Images

![The Little Friend: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81940QUpbkL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ One of the Best Books I've Ever Read
*by E***S on November 8, 2013*

Had I paid any attention to the reviews at either Goodreads or Amazon, I might have been dissuaded from reading The Little Friend by those who didn't like the book, calling it "boring", "too long", "bad ending". That would have been a sad thing, because I'm putting it in that Difficult-to-Get-Into club of mine called "One of the Best Books I've Ever Read". It's very hard for me to see this as anything less than a 5-star book, so let me try to convince you readers who are contemplating reading it but are on the fence because of the book's detractors. However, let me temper that with a caution to those who want a quick read, a tied-up-in-a-bow ending, or who aren't willing to get deep into a character and the character's milieu---if you are one of those, go with a John Grisham. The paperback edition I read was a hefty 624-pages, and I savored every one of them. The editor's description of The Little Friend (TLF) will lead you to believe that this is a murder mystery, and perhaps that's why some readers are ticked off that it lacks the typical and expected structure of a murder mystery. In fact, that's likely what enticed me to buy it. But while TLF does, indeed, begin with a mystery---the 12-year old, unsolved murder of the brother of the main character, Harriet. The mystery is also the impetus for the quest that is the book's focus. But the mystery is simply the background and jumping off place. This is really a story about Harriet, one of the most compelling characters I've ever encountered; the town where the story takes place (Alexandria, Mississippi); and the recently desegregated and deeply racist social climate in which the action occurs. Harriet was a baby when her brother, Robin, is murdered. When we meet her 12 years later, she's like an urchin from a Dickens' story. If it were not for the inconsistent and eclectic parenting she receives from the family's African-American housekeeper, her stern and cold grandmother, and a gaggle of great-aunts, Harriet would be just a step away from being raised by wolves. Her mother has been in a drug-induced slumber since the day of the murder, and her father lives in Nashville and only visits on holidays. Harriet is an old soul. She's intelligent, indomitable, opinionated, delightfully odd, and very well-read. The tales of Kipling, Stevenson, Doyle, and those of true-life adventurers fuel her imagination. A summer without the structure and diversion of school, and the general lack of parental supervision the children receive, provide a fertile ground in which Harriet and her devoted acolyte, Hely, set out to find Robin's killer. But, again, though it's an important one, this "detecting" is simply the backstory. TLF's prologue is one of the best I've ever read. It begins: "For the rest of her life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son's death because she had decided to have the Mother's Day dinner at six in the evening instead of noon, which is when the Cleves usually had it." Its 15 pages concisely and brilliantly provide us with everything we need to know to prepare us for the rest of the story. We clearly understand the family dynamics and a bit of its history. We meet many of the characters and, in very few words, we learn a lot about each one of them. We know the horrific event that forever after alters the family and sets in motion its disintegration. But from that point forward, each subsequent chapter is minutely detailed. Many readers found that maddening, but others, like me, loved and appreciated those details. I found myself rereading passages to savor them, and noticing now beautifully crafted and essential all those lovely words were. One of the things that I found the most amazing was how well Tartt captured the time and place: the casual and cruel racism, the decaying town, the cadence and sound of the voices across the spectrum of social classes; and the thinking of the children: their fertile imaginations, their terrible decisions, the pains they must endure at the hands of the careless and unthinking adults who rule their worlds. My early childhood was spent in a small Missouri town in the 1950s, and Tartt's descriptions brought back the sights, sounds, and feelings (both physical and emotional) of that time and place. Other reviewers have compared TLF to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I was also making those comparisons. But to be clear, TLF by no means mimics those books---it holds its own and is unique in its voice, but it shares the keen sense of place and the uncanny understanding of the characters' interior lives that those other books have. Many reviewers complained about the book's ending. I'm trying not to spoil it for readers by what I'm going to say next, so if you are even a tad concerned about that, stop reading this review now. The ending is not all tied up in a bow, with the author going over clues we should have picked up on, and detailing for us why the killer did what he/she did. If you are expecting such an ending, this book won't deliver. But I contend that Tartt wrote the perfect ending for this particular book. It's is purposefully and carefully written, and A Little Friend would be a completely different book with anything but the ending Tartt gives us. I believe that the Prologue and ending are a pair of perfectly matched bookends. I loved this book and highly recommend it for people who want beautifully written prose and a whopping good story. I'm in awe of Donna Tartt's talent and insight into the human spirit, and immensely glad I found her. I'm reading Tartt's The Secret History next.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A stranger, darker, better cousin to The Goldfinch
*by I***V on February 2, 2019*

"The Little Friend is set in the American South. It starts with a grisly murder of a 9-year-old boy. More than a decade later, his younger sister vows to find and punish the perpetrator." Frankly, I'm tempted to leave it at that, and let you discover the chameleonic nature of the book by yourself. Because, y'see, The Little Friend is nothing like its more acclaimed successor that you've probably read first. Despite the troubled protagonist, dark undertones and numerous plot zigzags, you somehow knew from the very first pages that The Goldfinch was a straightforward redemption tale headed towards the inevitable happy ending. With The Little Friend, you're never sure. It starts as a murder mystery (which it definitely is not), then turns into a tale of revenge, then morphs into something else entirely. Its heroine, Harriet, is a brilliant, resourceful, stubborn and independent teenage girl, but her grief and obsession with revenge eventually make her into a much more... complicated character. Its finale, while pretty uneventful compared to that of The Goldfinch, somehow seems much more definitive. I'd really hate to be more specific about the plot or even technical details, and spoil the numerous ways the book screws with your assumptions. I just want to add a word of warning: just as The Goldfinch contains too many overly lengthy and dull passages, this book contains many characters that contribute little to the story and plotlines that are not resolved in any meaningful way. It annoyed me quite a lot, but after finishing the novel, I sort of started seeing it as a feature, not a bug: every false trail and every shaggy dog subplot contribute to the point that in our search for the right answers, for the solution to a mystery, for closure we may miss a grander truth. So if you find yourself put off by the book's seeming incoherence, try to persevere. It's worth it.

### ⭐⭐⭐ seems like something out of the glitteriest fairytale
*by A***. on June 8, 2016*

From the first read of Tartt's The Goldfinch, I was hooked. The obsession with beauty reflects into every corner of the book, from the plot to the language to the use of time to the setting. A sewer, in that book, seems like something out of the glitteriest fairytale. I liked every person in it, even the bad ones, even the bullies, they felt real. Like people I might meet someday. In spite of the unlikely plot, The Goldfinch is one of the most realistic books I've ever read. The Secret History felt the same. The undercurrent of unlucky stars and Theo's hidalgo personality became a more roiling evil and apathy in it, but even in that awful winter shack there was a sort of glitz, a sparkle. Reading those books is escapism. The Little Friend also has some good things. It has beautiful language, it has eerily perfect temporal description, and the place is very real. I can feel the surroundings in that book around me, just as the racism and flamboyant Christian ideals feel very well-drawn. The impact of Robin's death feels very like what might happen on your doorstep, something Tartt must be a superpower to pull off. However, I didn't like it all that much. The chorus of narrative personalities squeezed into one third-person narration was interesting, but it felt impersonal, and occasionally made the characters seem a bit one-dimensional. The people in the book, which I find very important, are many and varied, but some characters filled with potential, such as Edie, were left a bit undeveloped, and for some reason I found most people in the book very easy to dislike, even Harriet and Hely. The plot has none of the glitz of the previous books, and it could have been so enticing. One of the best made aspects of the book, which is the hard-as-nails portrayal of the ugliness and unpredictability of life, I found soured my reading experience significantly. It takes another kind of person to like this almost pessimistic portrayal of the world, and I like evil and ugliness the way I found it in Tartt's other two books: filled with beauty. Everything can be beautiful, if seen from the correct perspective, which is another problem with the narrative voice, that a single perspective would perhaps have given the book an unseen dimension. The collective character used here is reminiscent of García Márquez' La Mala Hora, which uses an entire town as its main character, but unsuprisingly that is a hugely disliked book. It is very well to attempt a difficult and admirable style, but knowing how to pick your challenges is better, and it is plain to see that a different sort of narration would have benefitted this book plenty. One scene stayed with me, which is the one where Harriet, in a foolhardy attempt to save a blackbird trapped in a tar pool, ends up hastening its already inevitable death. I could feel my arm being pulled out as Harriet tried desperately to save the poor bird. It is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and terrible scenes I've read, and it also is a remarkably good portrayal of Harriet's personality; impulsive, rough. I am alright with the ending. Like most, I would have preferred closure, but Harriet's giving up of the quest is a miraculous thing: she grows up. She lets go of some unnecessary hate, hate that made the book so bitter when it might not have been. This letting go shows us how much of a coming-of-age tale this book really is. Overall, I think I'll enjoy it more the next I read it. I think that those expecting to find Tartt as they have found her in other books will find her, but with a disagreeable veneer. The ugliness of this book, which can be enjoyable or exciting in shorter works, was cumbersome in something so large. Expect to continue finding the awesome vocabulary, but this book is one difficul critter to like.

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Little Friend
- The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
- The Secret History: A Read with Jenna Pick

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*Product available on Desertcart Croatia*
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*Last updated: 2026-03-03*