One of their whelps, Danny, becomes Harriet's prime suspect in her bicycle-powered summer investigation. The past clogs the present and blocks the future, for all the period allusions to Scooby Doo, The Carpenters and Herbie Rides Again.Īgainst the Cleves' world of women (depicted with huge charm) stands the testosterone-driven tribe of the 'sorry' Ratliffs. Relics from their demolished mansion, 'Tribulation', clutter the aunts' homes. The real mothering for tough little Harriet and her tender older sister, Allison, comes from Ida Rhew: the beloved but exploited housekeeper to this old plantation family. Disciples have expected wonders, waiting with a millennial zeal that exceeds anything found among the backwoods holy-rollers who lurk within these sultry pages.Įdie, in fact, plays more of a father's role. The Mississippi-raised writer's first novel since The Secret History, a decade ago, has turned into a sort of second coming. Before long, an equally vast army will also recognise the outline of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. But the tale-spinner will repent, and the curtain drop on a self-dramatising childhood.Īs its legion of admirers knows, so runs the main action of Ian McEwan's Atonement. Her book-bred fancies will push a marginal young man into the glare of shame and ruin. The effectively fatherless child of an élite family, she lives in a sleepy, class-bound backwater. Moulded by the yarns of daring and detection she has read, this story will transform her world over a single, clammy summer. On the brink of adolescence, and all its hormonal storms, a clever but wildly imaginative girl makes up a story from fragments of hearsay and fantasy.

The little friend book review