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jonahwarhier's Most Popular Reviews
For anyone used to Donna Tartt's indolent pacing and dramatic storytelling, this book will be a treat.
Just like The Secret History and The Goldfinch (both of which supercede The Little Friend, in my opinion) this book manages to masterfully weave together its many strands of exposition in an ending that I literally couldn't put down and I anticipated throughout the entire novel. Donna Tartt is great at realistically writing horrible people and environments.
Differently from her other works, it is less of a coming-of-age story, though just as crime novel-like. Before the unraveling of the grand finale, it does tend to drag on a little for this reason, and feels a little static at times.
I did still very much find this an enjoyable read and look forward to the next Donna Tartt book.
Novels with footnotes are good. This one is no exception.
People complain about it being too long, but I found 1006 pages to be a perfectly adequate length (maybe even too short!) to as expertly convey plot, characters and their development as Susanna Clarke has done here. The story and especially the magical lore is constructed in such a way that it's not forced upon the reader, but they find themselves inbetween it organically constructing themselves around them.
Khalidi successfully tells the story of the conflict from a Palestinian perspective, and brings his point of it being a settler-colonial one across plausibly. However, it's clear that the book doesn't really attempt being a comprehensive account of the conflict, and often you'll be lost within one of the subchapters, needing to look up information about groups, dates and individuals yourself. This is a problem sometimes, as this omission of information can draw doubt on the rest of the narrative. Still, especially the conclusion and afterword strengthened my understanding of the situation in Israel and Palestine.
