Yep, this is one of those books.) I mean, I picked up the serpent symbolism (you can read about that in my last question to JJ here!), and I picked up on quite a lot of other things, but the name.? Completely eludes me. I have absolutely NO clue how this name connects to what happened (or didn’t happen. This book has been a disapppointment in many ways, but one of them is the strange niggling feeling inside that either I’ve grown too simple to understand literary, or literary has grown too elusive. What did you make of Tartt’s choice of The Little Friend for the title of this book?Īctually… I am utterly baffled. So Harriet embarks on a dangerous endeavour… Sometimes book titles have a very obvious meaning (like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and others make the reader work a little harder, or leave it up to their interpretation. Having been but a baby when it all happened, she’s got no leads – and it doesn’t seem like anyone would help her either, because nobody wants to dig up painful events that are a decade old. What Harriet wants the most though, is to take control and punish the murderer of her brother – but there is a problem. Harriet has grown up in the shadow of a horrible family tragedy – her older brother being mysteriously killed by an unknown perpetrator beside their family home.This event has never allowed family life to go on the way it should have, and Harriet grew up in a pretty dystfunctional atmosphere, despite everything looking respectable on the outside.

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The Little Friend by Donna Tartt