Little Friend, the - Softcover

Tartt, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747564493 ISBN 13: 9780747564492

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2005

Synopsis

Although the Cleves generally revelled in every detail of their family history, the events of 'the terrible Mother's Day' were never, ever discussed. On that day, nine-year-old Robin Cleves, loved by all for his whims and peculiarities, was found hanging by the neck from a rope slung over a black-tupelo tree in his own garden. Eleven years later, the mystery - with its taunting traces of foul play - was no nearer a solution than it had been on the day it happened. This isn't good enough for Robin's youngest sister Harriet. Only a baby when the tragedy occurred, but now twelve-years-old and steeped in the adventurous daring of favourite writers such as Stevenson, Kipling and Conan Doyle, Harriet is ready and eager to find and punish her brother's killer. Her closest friend Hely - who would try anything to make Harriet love him - has sworn allegiance to her call for revenge. But the world these plucky twelve-year-olds are to encounter has nothing to do with child's play: it is dark, adult and all too menacing. In Donna Tartt's "Mississippi", the sense of place and sense of the past mingle redolently with rich human drama to create a collective alchemy. Here eccentric great aunts bustle about graciously despite faded fortunes and a child's inquiring mind not only unearths telling family artefacts, but stirs up a neighbourhood nest of vipers and larceny. "The Little Friend" is a profoundly involving novel which demonstrates how the imaginary life embraces what literature we read, what special places we inhabit and what kindred souls we recognize, to help crack open even the darkest secrets life has hiding for us.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil.
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin's sister Harriet--unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and "a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens" ("The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

From the Back Cover:

“The Little Friend seems destined to become a special kind of classic. . . .It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it's all just make-believe.”--The New York Times Book Review

“At times humorous, at times heartbreaking, The Little Friend is most surprising when it is edge of the seat scary.” --USA Today

“Harriet [is] one of the most engaging and rounded characters you are likely to find...Tartt’s writing: gorgeous, fluent, visual.” --The Times (London)

“Languidly atmospheric... psychologically acute.... A rich novel that takes you somewhere worth going.” --The New Yorker

“A terrific story. . . . Tartt etches each of these characters with indelible assurance.” –Newsweek

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0747564493
• ISBN 13: 9780747564492
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 576