The Little Friend
The Little Friend is the second novel by the American author, Donna Tartt. The novel was initially published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 22, 2002, a decade after her first novel, The Secret History. The Little Friend is a mystery adventure, centered on a young girl, Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, living in Mississippi in the early 1970s. The story follows Harriet's anxiety surrounding the unexplained death of her brother, Robin, who was killed by hanging in 1964 at the age of nine. As well, the dynamics of Harriet's extended family–particularly her aunts–are a strong focus of the novel, as are the lifestyles and customs of contrasting Southerners. In an interview with The Guardian in 2002, Tartt described The Little Friend as "a frightening, scary book about children coming into contact with the world of adults in a frightening way." 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. The Secret History was all from the point of view of Richard, a single camera, but the new book is symphonic, like War and Peace. That's widely thought to be the most difficult