Donna Tartt

I came upon Donna Tartt's work by accident, by failing to mail in my book club card to QPB a few years ago. The Little Friend, a novel about a precocious young girl named Harriet Dufresnes who tries to uncover the mystery of her brother's murder, was one of the two books selected for the month, and I must admit receiving it was one of the best accidents I have made. I had not been as absorbed and enthralled by a murder mystery since reading Edgar Allen Poe's stories. Tartt's writing is as chilling and mesmerizing as "The Tell-Tale Heart" or "A Cask of Amantiado". After finishing The Little Friend, I had to get my hands on Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, which follows a misfit group of Greek scholars who commit a murder and try to keep it under wraps. Once again I was stunned by her rich character development and eloquently-crafted writing. According to an essay in Poets & Writers, Tartt dedicated about ten years on each novel to carefully craft each sentence of her stories, being meticulous about her diction and literary references. I think that her hybrid, the literary thriller, will still be read a hundred years from now because readers will be spellbound by her meticulous tales of unsolved murders and the enigmatic characters who carry them out.

In the Poets & Writers article, Therese Eiben describes Tartt's writing process. "Once the idea for the novel eventually took shape in her mind, Tartt began to write it, in her own grueling way--one sentence crafted until it is exactly as she wants it; then a pause to get to her bearings; then on to the next." Both of Tartt's novels reflect this scrupulous delivery of storytelling through poetic description. Take for example this paragraph from The Secret History: "At any rate, this was the weekend that things started to change, that the dark gaps between the street lamps begin to grow smaller and smaller, and farther apart, the first sign that one's train is approaching familiar territory, and will soon be passing through the well-known, well-lighted streets of town."

Another aspect of well-crafted fiction is creating three-dimensional characters. In The Secret History and The Little Friend, Tartt's characters are convincing, so much so they seem to come alive on the page. This excerpt from The Little Friend portrays Harriet's sister's ethereal beauty:

All her grace was in her vagueness. Her voice was soft, her manner languid, her features blurred and dreamy; and to her grandmother Edie --who prized sparkle and high color--she was something of a disappointment. Allison's bloom was delicate and artless, like the flowering grass in June, consisting wholly of a youthful freshness that (no one knew better than Edie) was the first thing to go.

Tartt reels in the reader with these beautiful and (sometimes) horrific descriptions of her subjects, prompting new considerations about the human experience.

Part of what makes Tartt's stories remarkable is that they delve into deeper questions and conclusions such as justice, guilt, and suffering. The second half of The Secret History describes the excruciating guilt Richard Papen and some of his friends experience from committing murders and not confessing to the police about their crime. The Little Friend looks at an unsolved murder from the prospective of the victim's family. In both novels Tartt holds aspects of human psyche under different shades of light.

The Secret History and The Little Friend are intricate stories, beautifully written and significant; they will stand the test of time as works that explore the terrain of the mind.

- Jesmia Avery

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