Throughout the book, Harriet references Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, a book about the life of Robert Falcon Scott and a fairy tale about the King of Snakes while, in contrast, Hely often references From Russia with Love.

There is an incident with a snake (actually, there are several -- ophidian fans will be thrilled) and Harriet the hunter also becomes the hunted. The possible, as it was presented in her Health textbook (a mathematical progression of dating, "career," marriage, and motherhood), did not interest Harriet.Yet the verbosity yields passages of mesmerising beauty; the caricature, stretches of delirious comedy; and the melodrama, moments of nerve-shredding excitement. Then she says - and you get the feeling she can already see this in big type, a modern-day Dorothy Parker - "I like a glass of whiskey in the winter, I like a gin and tonic in the summer, I like a glass of champagne anytime. I tell her that I've heard that, despite her size, she takes a drink better than any man (and it's pretty disappointing that she won't drink with me). At the suggestion of Morris and others she transferred to Bennington College in 1982, a private liberal arts college in Vermont. Tartt continues: "Unfortunately, there's a big anti-intellectual strain in the American south, and there always has been.

Written with an evocative sense of time and place, Tartt paints a rich picture of the decaying town in which the novel is set; a place that is ripe with casual and cruel racism, where the spectrum of social classes is divisive; and the thinking of the children and their fertile imaginations is front and centre of the story. Farish, not a particularly intelligent man, is planning a drug shipment hidden within a truck transporting venomous snakes, which another brother, Eugene, uses to support his Evangelical preaching. In doing so she travels the lines of race and class in her hometown, discovers the sprawling history of her family, and draws the ire of the local Ratliff clan, the middle brother Danny of which she suspects is Robin's killer. She slipped her hands underneath it, supporting its stuck wing as best as she could and - wincing against the wing beating violent in her face - lifted up. Now 38, she really is tiny, startlingly so; she still has that famous shiny Louise Brooks bob, still wears boys' clothes from Gap Kids, would rather not say from where she bought the stern black jacket and plain white shirt with crocheted buttons.

Danny knows that drugs were hidden by his brother, after the failed shipment, in a water tower where they are also discovered by Harriet who throws them into the water.

Harriet learns about betrayal, guilt and loss, and crosses the threshold into an irrevocable knowledge of true evil. is overlong, its writing occasionally precious and its resolution murky; and I can also praise the book's vital characters, its supple conjuring of mood and place, and its dry, dark humor.No beach-bound horizontal consumer of the higher hokum is going to let the author of The Secret History's second book pass by unread, though what they will find is frankly frustrating. A)lthough Donna Tartt’s capacity is never in doubt, her encompassing overview does the plot no favours, allowing in diversions and digressions which she deals with authoritatively but which may reveal a determination to succeed on her own terms, however much these prove frustrating to the reader. In the wake of Robin's death, a network that includes Harriet's grandmother Edith, Harriet's three great aunts - Libby, Tat, and Adelaide - and the housekeeper Ida coalesce to help raise Harriet and Allison while their mother retreats to her bedroom most days and her father moves to another state for his job and has an extended affair.

If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added. Tartt told the interviewer that The Little Friend was intentionally different from The Secret History, stating: "I wanted to take on a completely different set of technical problems.

It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it's all just make-believe. It's very much the Daughters of the American Revolution [a society to which you can belong only if your ancestors fought in the American war of independence]. The hyperbole works as long as it is coupled to Tartt's precise descriptions or her accurate ear for dialogue.