The Little Friend

About the book

The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of The Secret History --"an elegant, edifying work of art" (Entertainment Weekly), an international best-seller, and one of the most astonishing debuts in recent times.In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up haunted by the murder of her brother, who was found hanging from a tree in their yard when she was just a baby. Robin's killer was never identified, nor has the family recovered. With her father having absented himself and her mother incapacitated by grief, Harriet lives largely in the world of her own imagination, alone even in the company of her teenage sister (destined never to recall whatever she saw that terrible day) and elderly relatives (for whom this tragedy was a culminating blow). For Harriet, though, Robin is a link to the happier past she knows about from stories and photographs; and so she decides, in the summer of her 12th year, to find his murderer and exact her revenge.Even more transfixingly suspenseful than its predecessor, The Little Friend is a dark novel of lost childhood, breathtaking in its ambition and power, rich in moral paradox, profound insights into human frailty, and storytelling brilliance.