The Little Friend

Acclaim for Donna Tartt’s

THE LITTLE FRIEND

W. H. Smith Literary Award Winner

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize

“The work of a born storyteller … wonderfully ambitious.”

—The Boston Globe

“[Tartt] is simply a much stronger, richer, deeper writer than just about any other realist of her generation, Southern or not.”

—Chicago Tribune

“I read it in a single day because I couldn’t stop.… Her artistry is flawless.”

—Dail Willis, The Baltimore Sun

“A powerhouse story.… From its darkly enticing opening … we are held spellbound.… Tartt is a sophisticated yarn-spinner.… Breathtaking.”

—Elle

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

—Newsweek

“A lush and old-fashioned evening gown of a book.… The prose is rich, elaborate, and elegantly controlled.”

—O, The Oprah Magazine

“If you don’t fall smack-bang in love with Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, you’ve got a cement heart.… Tartt makes fiction read like fact.… Her writing is great like a song. You memorize it without realizing.”

—Financial Times

“An emotional and romantic page-turner.… Engrossing.… The reader is drawn … immediately into the lives of these characters.”

—Vogue

“Tartt generates a narrative of nearly unbearable tension as she poses questions of ethics and morality.… This is the novel we’ve been waiting for.”

—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“The Little Friend is a sprawling story of vengeance, with few wasted words told in a rich, controlled voice that can come only from long effort, which doesn’t show ostentatiously on the page.”

—Time

“A dark tale of lost innocence populated by a cast of characters that would make Flannery O’Connor proud.”

—People

“A rich study of race, class and family with a sprawling cast of characters.”

—The Economist

“A gut-thumping story of a little girl seeking a measure of understanding and well-deserved revenge.… A deeper exploration of the dark manner in which the past never leaves us alone.”

—Esquire

“This is a true Southern novel—rooted in and wrung out of a background that allows it to qualify as a very fine book.”

—New York Daily News

“The dense, steamy mood of a small-town Mississippi summer blends together beautifully with Tartt’s extraordinarily patient evocation of the inwardness of twelve-year-old Harriet Cleve.… Tartt writes with confident mastery.… A carefully layered portrait of a remarkable girl’s chrysalis summer.”

—Sven Birkerts, Book

Books by Donna Tartt

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The Secret History

The Little Friend

FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, OCTOBER 2003

Copyright © 2002 by Donna Tartt

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2002.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Marlowe & Company for permission to reprint excerpts from A Treasury of African Folklore by Harold Courlander. Copyright © 1996 by Harold Courlander. Reprinted by permission of Marlowe & Company.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:

Tartt, Donna.

The little friend / Donna Tartt.—1st ed.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-87348-4

1. Murder victims’ families—Fiction. 2. Brothers—Death—Fiction. 3. Mississippi—Fiction.

4. Sisters—Fiction. 5. Revenge—Fiction. 6. Girls—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3570.A657 L58 2002

813′.54—dc21 2002066878

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.1

For Neal

The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.

—SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS,

SUMMA THEOLOGICA I, 1, 5 AD 1

——

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now locked up in a handcuff that has taken a British mechanic five years to make. I do not know whether I am going to get out of it or not, but I can assure you I am going to do my best.

—HARRY HOUDINI, LONDON HIPPODROME,

SAINT PATRICK’S DAY, 1904

CONTENTS

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Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One   The Dead Cat

Chapter Two   The Blackbird

Chapter Three   The Pool Hall

Chapter Four   The Mission

Chapter Five   The Red Gloves

Chapter Six   The Funeral

Chapter Seven   The Tower

Acknowledgments

Prologue

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