Apparently when planning out this novel Donna Tartt said to herself, "I'm gonna characterize the FUCK out of these people", and so for over 550 pages of the hardcover edition, she did. Imagine a classical music composer largely eschewing melody in the creating of a lengthy symphony, though obligatory nods in that direction are included, but creating a work with astounding orchestral colorization. So it is here with Tartt, plot, and characterization. It will frustrate and annoy many. It did me when I didn't feel quite in the mood for it in these few weeks it took me to go through it, when I was thinking that a melody with a nice hook sure sounded appealing. Having finished it now and with the whole piece in mind, I'm left thinking how impressive the achievement is, and what a great talent Tartt has. ( )

** SPOILERS **

unlike the secret history and the goldfinch, this one does not have such a satisfying ending - it's open, leaving more questions than answers, lifetimes of uncertainty stretching ahead. but because of that, it's more *real* than her other two books. yes, the misunderstandings are the stuff of fairytales, but it's all so grounded that i never got swept away into fantasy. tartt's child characters are so convincingly young and fully articulated, in a way that no other writer quite manages, i think. and of course, this story is set in the world she grew up in, which makes it all the richer. her writing is gripping as always, but more propulsive and accessible here, i felt. i can see why people like it less than her other two books, because it's less pretentious. but to me that just makes it different. she's a master. that's all there is to say. ( )

Not as good as The Secret History but still well worth reading. ( )

Wow, this book is quite the disappointment! I found myself really drawn into the story, enjoying it, and caring about the characters. But then the last, say, 5% really went off a cliff, actually getting worse as it got to the end of the book. So many things wrong... I didn't find the climax of the plot satisfying or particularly consistent with the feel of the book; there was too much material after the climax, which led me to think, or hope, that there would be something more to better tie things together; so much stuff was left undealt with; the very last chapter ends in an inconsequential conversation with a weak pay-off.

The main character is a Mississippian girl, who was a baby when her brother was murdered. Now nearly a teenager, and precocious and uncompromising with it, she wants to revenge her brother's death. There's probably a genre of stories about headstrong children learning too much too fast about the adult world - I felt a distinct familiarity with the general tenor of the book.

Passing over the ending, I did enjoy reading the book a lot, although I did sometimes feel that Tartt wasn't at the top of her game. Some passages left me struggling to know what was going on. These things just make it feel like it was rushed out a bit (and it could have been a little shorter than its 600 odd pages - but, again, perhaps she didn't have time to write a shorter novel).

And that's the annoying thing - particularly having emotionally invested in the characters for 600 pages: there's nothing wrong with the book that wasn't fixable. And it could have been good. ( )

The blurb for this book makes it sound like a murder mystery, but it's far from that. Instead, it's a study of a family pulled apart by the death - and it seems, murder - of a bright and energetic son, Robin, at 9 years old, which occurs at the very start of the book. After that, we pick up the story 12 years later with his youngest sister, Harriet, who is the main character.

I loved Harriet although I found her very reminiscent of the protagonist in the children's book, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, and there are parallels between the two, for example, the way she is reared by the housekeeper and devastated when the latter leaves. However, this is a more developed character, and she doesn't spy on people out of sheer nosiness. Instead, this Harriet forms an obsession with who killed Robin, and embarks on a singleminded quest to dish out retribution to the person concerned. The finger is pointed by the housekeeper, Ida, whom Harriet loves and uncritically believes, and she sets out to 'get' Danny Ratliff, who already has a criminal record at the age of 20 and who was in Robin's class at school. The Ratliff family are a crime wave in themselves, and Ida holds a grudge from when they burned down a church, killing an old lady and causing her and others to suffer burns.

The book is a rather rambling tale: it consists of over 500 pages of small print. Much of it is beautifully written and observed, with believable everyday life in a small town, the interactions of family and how people often get on each others' nerves, and lots of minor quirky characters. Contrasts are made between Harriet's own more privileged family, though they have fallen from their former grandeur, and the black women who work in their houses for low pay, and the 'white trash' Ratliffs, who live in an American Gothic setting which borders on the surreal. Danny Ratliff and his brothers live in trailers with their decrepit grandmother who trades on her various illnesses, and passes on her own pernicious views of how poor people like themselves are victimised, while disdaining the education that might help her grandsons escape their deadend existence. Her favourite, Danny's elder brother, is a psychotic who has taken on these attitudes as well as inheriting their deceased father's violent streak. These tendencies are worsened by his liberal sampling of the metamphetamine he manufactures. Danny also is hooked and becomes increasingly strung out, partly through his inability to sleep due to the drug.

The Ratliffs' sense of persecution spirals as Harriet and her friend Hely become interested in what they are doing in the upstairs apartment which another of the brothers, who 'got' religion in jail, is renting. A guest preacher from out of town is staying: part of his ministry involves snakehandling, and he brings several boxes of snakes, which must be hidden from the landlord. The set piece where the two children break into the apartment is a tour de force. In fact, snakes figure largely in this story: I had no idea before that there were so many poisonous kinds in the USA. Unfortunately for Harriet, the brothers search for her afterwards, and she is drawn increasingly into danger. This suspenseful subplot contrasts with the languid life of Harriet's mother Charlotte - who has never recovered from Robin's death and spends most of the time lying around in bed, spaced out on tranquilisers - and her older sister Allison who lives a kind of dream existence. Harriet takes after her no-nonsense grandmother Edie, another character I liked, and finds it impossible to confide in her family. She only has Hely to turn to and when he is drawn away into school activities, he inadvertantly abandons her to the mercies of the Ratliff family.

A lot of the book is in the style of 'slice of life', giving the flavour of life in a southern American town in what appears to be the 1970s from the various clues and references made. A lot of things are brought in and appear to be significant, but are then dropped - Robin's blackbird costume, a hat once found by an aunt on her bed when no one apparently could have entered the house, Allison's amnesia about what happened to Robin although she was out in the garden and was found crying, so it seems she was a witness. This would probably frustrate a lot of readers, but I found I could go with the flow - this isn't really a crime story despite the criminals, and the crime - if it was that and not a freak accident which happened to a little boy who liked playing Batman - is significant more for the way it has wrenched family life out of a precarious normality, and the impact it has had on the forming of Harriet's character. Only the very ending caught me out a bit when it veered off to a conversation between Hely and his older brother, but I think it is meant to point us to who 'dunnit'. The scene just before it, where Harriet's father mentions 'Robin's little friend, Danny' (presumably Danny is the 'little friend' of the title, which explains why so much of the book focuses on his viewpoint), leading to Harriet's horrified realisation that she might have been wrong all along, might also act as a reminder, when we read the final scene, that Hely's brother was also in Robin's class and therefore could have been a visitor to the house. .

Ultimately the book is realistic enough that we never find out for sure who was responsible and whether it was murder or a childhood game gone wrong - as so often in real life. The book almost earned a 5-star rating, but is more of a 4.5 because there are a lot of bits which weren't really necessary even to the 'slice of life' aspect, and the Ratliff circus becomes a little too surreal to be believed at times. ( )