Rating: 
Summary: Boy howdy, I loved it
Review: Harriet, the 12yo protagonist, is born and bred in the tradition of Harper Lee's Scout Finch and Carson McCuller's Frankie Adams (but instead of a benevolent father or a wise housekeeper, Harriet has a tyrannical grandmother with a soft heart).
The Little Friend (insipid title that doesn't do justice to the depth of the story) is everything you could want in a book: stellar writing, nail-biting tension, hilarity, coming-of-age, atmosphere, loss of innocence, love, sorrow, and marvelous characters of all social classes without a cliche or stick figure among them.
The scene where Harriet and her cohort sneak into the upstairs of a flat where the bad guys live and find themselves literally in a next of poisonous snakes - well, those pages alone are worth the price of the book.
Superb and well worth the loooooong wait.
Rating: 
Summary: Worthy of attention, but readers beware
Review: The Little Friend is the type of book that could get nominated for the National Book Award and yet will not please many of the readers who enjoyed The Secret History. Tartt is a gifted writer, breathing life into an engaging twelve-year-old protagonist who sets out to solve a murder in the midst of two different families in the South. Local media (e.g. the San Francisco Chronicle) has been dying to give away the ending and finally did last week, probably with the blessing of Tartt herself, in town for an interview. But the ending is beside the point, as is the plot for the most part.
This book is driven by its characters, their language and rich inner lives hidden from the adults in the household, and their often outrageous actions - children hauling guns and poisonous snakes around town, outwitting a family of drug dealers. Harriet is a bit of Huck Finn and Scout Finch in a modern world, but in a much heavier epic which I found too tedious to enjoy completely despite many exquisite passages.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic!!
Review: I absolutely loved this book! I could not put it down. The first 50 - 75 pages were a little slow, but then it took off. I really enjoyed the characters, the setting, and the super detailed description of it all. (If you don't like detail while reading, you should avoid this novel.) There were some characters that were not as developed as others. My first reaction was that a I wish they would have been. However, after discussing with friends, I realized there may have been some purpose as to why the readers does not get to know all the characters.The only disappointment comes in the last few pages. (Which is why I didn't give it 5 stars.) It gripped me until then, and then left me wondering. However, I like to wonder why Donna Tartt left it as she did. Keeps the reader imaginative as opposed to just reading someone else's imagination!
Rating:
Summary: oh, donna
Review: I enjoyed the entire book until the last few pages. so much build up, friction, tension, beautiful(yet, sterotypical) storytelling, and in the end, a total frinking cop out.
Rating: 
Summary: A BIG, SPRAWLING, DISAPPOINTMENT
Review: Do NOT get sucked in by this book! Do NOT give in the pages and pages of lush prose and evocative characters and locales! Do NOT let "The Little Friend" get the better of you! Why not? Because the absolute LEAST a 600-page novel about a girl searching for her brother's murderer should do is tell you whodunit! And it does not! What a big, beautiful, sprawling waste of time this is. What a disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: There is NO ENDING, it JUST STOPS
Review: There are so many well written reviews already, that I will just add my biggest complaint. Donna Tartt FORGOT TO ADD AN ENDING! I thought a couple pages had been torn out of my book! Since not every reviewer complains about this, perhaps it is an accepted style of writing. However, after all the character development, and potentially exciting sub-plots, and after chasing down a potential murderer for so many pages...we are left with NOTHING. So there was no point to read it. No conclusion. Just colorful characters, none of them likeable, and vivid descriptions of disgusting predicaments that left me nauseous. I disagree, however, with giving this book 1 star, since Ms. Tartt's writing is not bad writing. A stupid romance novel can get one star. This book draws you in and makes you feel like you are in the world with the characters, and can see and smell what they do. You come to understand what kind of people they are. It just doesn't do you any good.
Rating:
Summary: The Little Friend
Review: What?????????? The book drew me in. Very proselike. The book was dreamy and full of hope for a good mystery. At times the lengthy novel would bore me, but I wanted the mystery solved. And in the end there were just too many questions left unanswered. "Will there be a Little Friend 2-Danny's Revenge?". I just put the book down and I'm a little angry at the loose strings.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling, but...
Review: You don't read a Donna Tartt book as much as you open it and are sucked into the pages, like a fly in a Venus flytrap. I have to say I really enjoyed this book, but I have to agree with many of the reviewers about the off-putting ending and subplots that apparently signified nothing. I guess when you're a famous novelist you can just finish up a book any way you want.
Rating:
Summary: meandering, dissapointing...but hard to give up on
Review: Reading this book is like watching a baseball game where the score wildly and unexpectedly changes every inning - and with it, your interest in the matchup. At first, your team is up by three runs and the game is exciting. Then it's down by seven runs and you start to lose interest. Then they pull even, only to fall way behind again. Finally, in the 9th, your team loads the bases and can win with a grand slam, but instead meagerly pops out to the first baseman.
My point: the book has some very promising parts - enough to keep reading - but is interspersed with meandering episodes that don't further the plot. Ultimately, as the book finally begins to pick up, it ends with a whimper, making at least 50 percent of it irrelevant. Ultimately, it's unfulfilling, somewhat frustrating and almost a waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Aw, Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?
Review: Harriet Dufresnes and Hely Hull are considerably more sanguine about snakes than Indiana Jones is though, and Donna Tartt makes their adventures with reptiles both funny and horrifying. The observations of Loyal Reese about snake handling could serve as an epigraph for the book: If the snake doesn't bite you, it's a miracle. If the snake bites you, and you live, it's a miracle. If it bites you and you die, it's the greatest miracle of all because you get to go to heaven. This novel is a not-so-small miracle. I've never had an experience quite like it, and I'm a college English teacher, so I've read A LOT. On one level, I wanted to stop reading the book; it seemed to be taking forever. On another, I couldn't quit. Tartt's prose is that addictive. Fortunately (?) I got sick and had to spend a couple of days in bed which allowed me to read nearly nonstop from about 1/3 of the way through to the end. It's hard to believe, but it really is a fast-moving story, as long as you don't have a life! I'm puzzled by those (including almost every review I read on this page) who want a tidy little package tied up with a bow at the end. Sure, it would have been nice to have the mystery fully solved, but that ain't how life works. This is an episode--a childhood picaresque without the geographical journey. The journey is inward. Harriet learns about loss through both death and a kind of betrayal, she comes to understand more about her family, she realizes that vegeance isn't hers to take, and overall, spends a pivotal summer in her life. I do have a couple of minor complaints that account for the missing fifth star: The novel could be more carefully edited. Word-for-word repetitions are not uncommon. Also, why on earth can't a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old throw in a load of laundry? If you've read the book, you know what I mean. If you choose to read it, and I surely hope you do, you'll find out. It's a fine, perceptive, evocative novel. I'm grateful I stayed the (occasionally daunting) course. The downside: I can't find anything else to read right now that measures up!
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