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After a ten-year hiatus, Donna Tartt, author of THE SECRET HISTORY
is back. THE LITTLE FRIEND, her long awaited second novel, exceeds
all expectations. And, while we may never know the reasons for the
wide gap between the two books, only the results matter . Suffice
it to say, the lady has outdone herself, and her latest effort has
been worth the wait.

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi where the Dufresne/Cleve
families, suffered a terrible tragedy that changed the course of
their lives irrevocably. One Mother's Day, Robin, their
nine-year-old son was murdered. "Mrs. Fountain saw him first." Her
screams brought Charlotte Cleve Dufrense, his mother, running, "He
was hanging by the neck from a piece of rope, slung over the low
branch of the black-tupelo that stood near the overgrown privet
hedge [that divided the Dufrense property from the Fountain's] he
was dead."

The only possible "witnesses" to his murder were his younger
sisters, Allison, who was four years old and the baby, Harriet. If
they saw anything it was buried in the deepest recesses of their
psyches, not to be recovered. For years the townspeople buzzed and
gossiped speculating about who could be responsible for such a
horrendous crime. Suspicion was everywhere and nowhere, and in the
end, the investigation was dropped.

Robin's family never discussed his brutal murder; rather, they
chose to remember him as a lively, lovable little boy, who brought
joy to those whose lives he touched. hether or not their anecdotal
remembrances were real was never an issue, "The Cleves chose to
agree on some subjective matter -- [and] it became automatically
and quite irrevocably -- the truth without any of them being aware
of the collective alchemy which had made it so."

Harriet's mother never quite forgave herself for Robin's death and
she withdrew into an "…indifference that numbed and colored
every area of her life," and her older daughter, Allison, followed
her into the same dreamy netherworld. Dix Cleve, the adulterous
absentee father, moved to another state and only occasionally came
home to visit.

But his absence transmogrified the Dufrense/Cleves into a
matriarchal family whose driving force is Charlotte's mother,
Edith, the children's fierce, no-nonsense grandmother. Edith's
sisters make up the rest of the clan and they are Harriet's support
system. They all live within walking distance of each other and
when Harriet needs comfort or company she turns to her great aunts
who welcome her kindly.

Tartt establishes all of this with languid prose that propels the
reader into the action twelve years after Robin's death. Harriet,
already a force a to reckon with is smart, snobbish, angry,
manipulating, independent, fiercely loyal and very strong. She is a
misfit among her peers, she doesn't share their interests, she is a
scholar by nature and has only one friend, Hely Hull, a boy who
idolizes her and would do anything for her.

Together the two pals devise a plan to avenge Robin's death.
Harriet commits herself with obsessive tunnel vision to finding the
killer. With snippets of unverified rumors she focuses her outrage
on one man, which puts her and Hely in the center of a tangled web
of danger, deceit, destruction and death.

Tartt's detailed depiction of the mores of life in a small southern
town, with an underbelly as corrupt and dangerous as any urban
center, throbs with pathos. She has given readers a provocative
novel which is interesting and suspenseful; part murder mystery,
part coming of age tale, part a child's story, part a story of
loyalty and friendship, part an interlocutory on the American
justice system, part a study in southern culture and mores, part a
commentary on the little ways families chip away at themselves,
especially in the face of tragedy or death, only to find their
center implodes and leaves a haunting void in its wake.

Of the major motif Tartt says, "This is a book about children, but
it's not a book for children. It's a frightening book. It's a scary
book. It's fairly dark. It's about children coming into contact
with adults … and coming into contact with the world of
adults in a very frightening way." She also maintains, time and
patience are the most important elements a writer must cultivate in
order to do "it" perfectly. She admits that she writes slowly and
says; too, "There are no real messages in my fiction. The first
duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty." And
these beliefs, put into practice, is precisely what makes THE
LITTLE FRIEND such a rich, passionate book in the spirit of Harper
Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, while at the same time, it is imbued
with the dark humor and loss of innocence vividly portrayed in
HARRIET THE SPY.

THE LITTLE FRIEND is a treasure and readers can only hope that Ms.
Tartt doesn't take ten years to produce another gem.