DNF Review: The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

I started this book because I had heard so many good things about Donna Tartt's other books, especially “The Secret History” and “Goldfinch”. But this one was the first that came to my library, so I figured this would be equally good. 

I recently did a post on why I find it SO hard to give up on a book even though I don’t like it. I decided that life is too short to waste precious reading time on books you are not really enjoying, and this book will be the victim of that determination! I’ve read 283 pages, just short of the halfway mark, and I just can’t get into it. Aside from the main plot point nothing has really happened yet, and that is just FAR too slow-moving for me! 


The book is about a family in the American South. The son of the family dies under mysterious circumstances and more than 10 years later his youngest sister decides to try and find out what really happened. And that is pretty much the synopsis and pretty much everything that has happened so far. When you’ve read 283 pages and learnt nothing more than what you can read on the back of the book, that is just not good enough for me. So I’ve decided to give up and move on to other books. I do have “Goldfinch” lying around as it came to my library a few days after this one, and I will give it a try, hoping that it will be more fast-paced than this one. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1000 Places to See Before You Die 20 - Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Image
You cannot go to Athens and not go to the Acropolis. It is a staple on any sightseeing tour and is likely to be crawling with tourists at any given point in time. Still, it is definitely worth it to brave the masses and see the fortified citadel above the city of Athens for yourself.   The word acropolis means the highest point of the city, and there are a number of these acropoleis scattered throughout Greece, but the one in Athens is so well known that it is simply called “The Acropolis”.  There is evidence that the area on the rocky outcropping overlooking the city was inhabited already in the 4th millennium BC, but it was Pericles who started construction on the many famous buildings in the 5th century BC. These famous buildings include the Parthenon, probably the most iconic of the buildings, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. These buildings were all seriously damaged in 1687 AD when the Venetians had sieged the city and used th
Read more

Reading the classics: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The book The book first appeared in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1890, and the year after it was released as a book in a revised edition. As I am working on this post, I discover that the book is not necessarily considered a classic….great choice for the kick-off post for the series then! However, in my experience, it does usually appear on “classics” lists, so I am going to count it! At the time of the first publication in 1890 it was considered immoral, by a lot of people, but Wilde took offense to that and defended his story. When it was published in book form though, he had changed some things and added a preface, that stated that books cannot be moral or immoral, only well written or badly written.  The author Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was Wilde’s full name, but he later changed it to Oscar Wilde because, as he said, the name was too long for someone who was going to be famous. He was born on October 16th 1854 in Dublin, Ireland. He went to Trinity Co
Read more

Review: Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Image
This is the first book in a series, but I have no intention of continuing on with this series. The plot evolves around two young people, Amy and Elder. They live on a spaceship that has left Earth to find a new planet to populate. Amy was part of the cryogeniccaly frozen people on board, meant to be woken up upon arrival and using their skill set to populate the new planet. Elder, meanwhile, is part of the population that has been keeping the ship running whilst it travels towards its destination.  One day Amy is woken up from her frozen sleep and now she must learn to live on this spaceship, without her parents, slowly learning the culture and the secrets of this ship. It turns out there is an abundance of mysteries on board this ship, like who is waking up (and killing) the frozen people, who is the mysterious deceased Elder, what is the current Eldest up to and what’s with the “crazy” people and their medication.  Eventually all these mysteries are solved, but is
Read more