A beautifully crafted book. From the back cover: "The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin's sister Harriet -- unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson -- sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and "a bustling" ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens", the Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

My only issue with the book was that the mystery was not fully resolved (and probably never would be)

Took book at monthly meet-up 2/15

Release at meeting 4/2016.

Returned to bookshelf after meeting on 4/2016.

I think Karen and I must have read different books. I was expecting something of the quality of The Goldfinch but instead got a story of a rotten little girl and a group of quirky great aunts. Whose mother was was a real piece of work and whose older sister was a basket case. I’m not sure who this girl was The Little Friend of.
Tartt can write so there are small doses of excellence in the book but not enough to last 600 pages.

Will leave Walnut Grove PO tomorrow