Rating: 
Summary: DISSAPOINTING BUT NOT A DISASTER!
Review: This book isn't quite the disaster other readers have made it out to be. At the very least it's readable, it's just the first one hundred pages promise much... and the next four-hundred and fifty deliver little. It's NOT a whodunnit as the jacket sleeve would have you believe. And this was the biggest hurdle for me, getting to about halfway and coming to the sinking realisation that NOTHING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN! And didn't! But for all of that, this reader continued to dutifully turn the pages. Miss Tartt's prose, lovely as it is, sinks into pretension pretty early on. Do we really need endless, flowery passages about the weather and the surroundings? Not really. Okay, the Mississipi is loving realised on the pages, but a whole book filled with it...this isn't a travelogue! And for a twelve year old, our heroine sure does know a lot of big words! In fact, what with her basin haircut and sucking-a-lemon expression, it's pretty obvious that Harriet is supposed to be Miss Tartt herself! Don't be too put off. Like beach-combers, you may be able to find good things amongst the grit and sand here. It's just a 500 plus pages, big and clever, literary book that has all the critics oohing and aahing into their Martinis, that would have worked much, much better a quarter of it's length. But hey, take a few Mogadon beforehand and you might have the read of your life. It's NOT bad, just...well, let's be honest here, it's DULL!
Rating: 
Summary: A masterful work about disappointment...
Review: If you're happy reading well-crafted, formula "literary" fiction, stay away. If you want to go to a more original place, read The Little Friend.The Little Friend comes from a non-conformist place, lending it freshness and some blood and guts. It questions the place and effectiveness in our culture of class, race, violence, boredom, death, friendship, "family life", religion, drug use, literacy and childhood. Bravo, Miss Tartt! The author has taken a huge risk - and some of you are disappointed. You feel she hid the ball. You think she overwrote. You wish she had a different editor. You don't get it. Sigh. Too bad. This is a genuinely amazing book, for readers who aren't passive, who remember being a child, and are prepared to go off the beaten formula-fiction path. I enjoyed it tremendously, and found that she convincingly evoked the feelings of "that summer" - the one many of us go through where we realize that we almost "understand" the grown-up world, but just aren't letting go of childhood...yet. So why are so many of you not getting it? Maybe because it is the story of one girl's summer of disappointment. A subject can register as "unpleasant" or "boring" simply because we don't always want to do the work needed to confront our own experiences. Since desire and disappointment work together, readers with big expectations can get surly I suppose. Something similar happened with Nabokov's "Lolita". Reviewers didn't understand how Nabokov modulated the prose to reflect Humbert's state of mind, taking us from the dreamy gorgeous writing of the beginning to the flat, disappointed banality of the final chapters. Result?... Right now, the novel desperately needs writers to take chances and push the envelope of the genre yet again. Editors are under increasing pressure to only take on properties that adhere to "formula". Everything gets "workshopped", urged to adhere to the same "rules" again and again. Writers congratulate themselves that they are "saleable", in denial that they have lapsed into conformity by the mighty stick-and-carrot wielded by their publishers. The result is an ocean of pseudo-literary pablum. For me, this book will stand out as one of the very best of 2002.
Rating: 
Summary: My God. This book is utter ...
Review: Please do not buy this book - I really enjoyed The Secret History for its exciting style and great writing but Tartt has really fumbled with this second book.
Unreadable, over-written, disjointed - truly disappointing.
I was so bored reading it that I skimmed through the last 300 pages just cos I always try to finish a book.
Why prime a reader right at the start with such a mysterious death when that death is never explained?
And did she really need to write a coming-of-age story that is this ridiculous and overwrought?
The overall impression is that she cheated the reader to dive in with a plausible murder mystery thriller in the beginning, only to have the story veer off in increasingly weird and too-coincidental subplots and soggy southern caricatures. (oh dear, she's actually a real southerner?)
10 years in the making and she comes up with - this?
I am not somebody who waited 10 years and built up too high expectations of this book - this is simply an awfully written piece of work.
To think I bought the hardcover on the strength of her mighty first book alone - don't touch this novel with a barge pole.
Rating:
Summary: It's a page-turner all right!
Review: I kept skipping over pages by the dozen. I just couldn't stomach the terrible story line about the delinquent Ratliff family, and I am sure I did not miss a thing. Since The Secret History was such a magnificent, spellbinding story that kept me up at night because I just couldn't put it down, I was very excited about Donna Tartt's new creation. The moment I read about it in the paper, I put in a request at my library. While the story line did not quite appeal to me, I had faith in Tartt that she would deliver another masterpiece, and after reading the first few pages, I thought she had pulled it off. But the story quickly disintegrated into a pathetic mess. The characters are all unbelievable - literally - and I quickly began to thoroughly dislike every single one of them, including the very unrealistic Harriet. Honestly now, has anyone EVER known such a child? Tartt's prose is wonderful in places, but too many times, it is just overblown. The stereotypes are ridiculous, and I just couldn't believe that I slogged through more than 500 pages just to find out that there is NO ENDING!!!
I am just glad I had done what one reviewer suggested - checked it out at the library. I wouldn't even want to pay the paperback price for it. What a great disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Crashing disappointment
Review: TSH is my favorite novel, so naturally I snapped up The Little Friend. Now I wish I'd saved my [X]. Some reviewer said it 'wisely' eschewed a feel-good resolution. That's OK, but how about any resolution whatsoever? The book just ends; it's like the last chapter fell out between the bookstore and my house. A lot of the book was good and classic Tartt - brilliant descriptions of mood, place, and feelings - but the ending was such a let-down that it ruined the whole thing for me. It's as if Miss Tartt was as drugged as most of her characters were while she was writing this book. Setting up a murder mystery (while TLF may not be wholly a mystery, that element is certainly important and present) and not having some resolution is a cop-out and a failure of imagination on the part of the author. If I wanted a story without a plot that goes nowhere and makes no sense, I don't need a book - real life is just like that. So what's the point of the book? Let me repeat - TLF is a crashing disappointment. Avoid, or at least don't shell out [X} for it.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: I was lucky...I got this from my public library, so I haven't wasted any money, just time. It was a big disappointment to me, though some of the writing was good. There wasn't much insight into the characters and was certainly unsatisfying in its ending. I felt that the author had just done short stints of writing, little pieces of this and that, and then had strung them together to make a book. What really bothered me was the media hype around this book (front page of the NYTimes Review of Books, People magazine, a syndicated book review feature in my local "free press", to give some examples) which gave the impression that this was a wonderful book and that time spent reading it was worthwhile. I feel that I wasted my time and didn't come away with anything worthwhile. Maybe the author simply didn't know what to conclude, which is why there was no conclusion. I think she was searching for what this book was to be about, but never found it. Silly and boring, unfortunately.
Rating:
Summary: what a shame!
Review: "The Secret History" was so great what a shame that "The Little Friend" is such a nightmare. I was so aggravated trying to read this mess that I had to get rid of the book as fast as I could! It's the most boring bit of crud I've ever read! Do NOT buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Modern Southern Gothic
Review: I don't understand what's the matter. There seems to be a rampant boycott going on about this novel, but I must say I find it ridiculous. All the naysayers are calling this book boring and the author racist. Come on! The book is set in the summer of 1970, and it should be noted that the social climate is captured with pitch-perfect ear. Harriet is a very well developed character and on her back she carries the whole weight of this engrossing, captivating and mysterious narrative, populated by eccentric characters and bizarre situations. Through her eyes we see how life can change in the blink of an eye. The horror of discovering the truth beneath the lies we have come to believe staunchly results in a chilling climax. Maybe I will be stoned by all the readers who don't like this book or don't get it. Anyhow, Donna Tartt's voice resounds long after closing the final pages. And it does what not many novels can: it can make you laugh and shudder sometimes in the same chapter, and that IS the purpose of the novel: it transports you to a place you had not been before, to the skin of someone else, and for a moment, you are Harriet Cleves Dufresnes and live through her, the darkest, most significant summer of her life.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't listen to these people
Review: People seem to be comparing this unfavorably with her first novel, but the flaws they pick out are aspects of her style that are in the first. ... This is not the first book. It's not set in the same social world, region or age group, but it is a beautifully written novel. The first one was slow (stately?) as this one is, but I found it to be compelling and suspenseful.
Rating:
Summary: FOUND A FRIEND IN THE LITTLE FRIEND
Review: Donna Tartt has become an author that I will look for from now on. "The Little Friend" had the flavor that I look for when I want to read something interesting, exciting and engrossing! This story felt comfy-cozy. It's not like so much junk that is being published these days. This piece of work is real literature, but you don't have to go back one hundred years to get it. I totally fell in love with Harriet's aunts. They were people I know. Ida, the maid, was so well depicted that I could actually see her. Gum was igenious. I didn't just read this story, I appreciated every piece of sweat and research that Ms. Tartt put into this piece of art. This story took me back, it took me forward. There was nothing that I wanted to delete or add. Here is a book that I actually would want to read again.
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