When I heard, on a winter day late last year, that Donna Tartt's second novel would soon appear, I longed to plunge back into The Secret History with new eyes, and take heed of signs, and wait, and wonder. At last, She was publishing again. At last, I would read something by Her which I hadn't read before. Her new book would be as rich and studded with jewels as Her first, and hitherto only, novel. It would change my mood for weeks on end. It would devour me over a period of perhaps three days, and I would devour it many times thereafter.
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling; and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
This prefatory quotation from Plato, slipped ironically into the first pages of The Secret History, certainly cannot be applied to The Little Friend. It is a large book. At more than 500 pages, bound in black, and excitingly solid and bulky, it is just heavy enough to make you think you might be carrying a box of riches in your bag. You will undo the clasp, open the lid, and gaze, wide-eyed and short of breath, at the dim glitter inside.
But this is a slow book, and its richness is as thick as a midge-filled summer afternoon. While occasionally you may be allowed to canter through a few pages at most, the rest of it may as well have a "Do Not Run" signboard, presided over by some stern, angular matron. The syrupy paragraphs drop slowly and heavily through your mind, one, two... three...... and another..... Some of them are light and sweet, some as dark and tinged with bitterness as black treacle.
It's not such an easy lay as The Secret History. It won't lie down with you and engage you in sweaty abandon for days on end, only to spit you out light-headed and spinning afterwards. It will hold you firmly, talk slowly, smile in a small way, and though you may want to pull away and do something else, you'll know you have to keep listening. This tale does not tell itself simply, but then, in the American South, a story may be months in the telling...
Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling; and our story shall be the education of our heroes.
This prefatory quotation from Plato, slipped ironically into the first pages of The Secret History, certainly cannot be applied to The Little Friend. It is a large book. At more than 500 pages, bound in black, and excitingly solid and bulky, it is just heavy enough to make you think you might be carrying a box of riches in your bag. You will undo the clasp, open the lid, and gaze, wide-eyed and short of breath, at the dim glitter inside.
But this is a slow book, and its richness is as thick as a midge-filled summer afternoon. While occasionally you may be allowed to canter through a few pages at most, the rest of it may as well have a "Do Not Run" signboard, presided over by some stern, angular matron. The syrupy paragraphs drop slowly and heavily through your mind, one, two... three...... and another..... Some of them are light and sweet, some as dark and tinged with bitterness as black treacle.
It's not such an easy lay as The Secret History. It won't lie down with you and engage you in sweaty abandon for days on end, only to spit you out light-headed and spinning afterwards. It will hold you firmly, talk slowly, smile in a small way, and though you may want to pull away and do something else, you'll know you have to keep listening. This tale does not tell itself simply, but then, in the American South, a story may be months in the telling...
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