Stood in the bookstore, I picked up this book, read the
blurb and turned to the first page; something I always do when making a
decision over a selection of books. The opening sentence, ‘For the rest of her
life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son’s death because she had
decided to have the Mother’s Day dinner at six in the evening rather than noon,
after Church, which is when the Cleves usually had it’, plunges straight into
the novel and sold the book to me.
Tartt uses Harriet, the dead boy’s sister, to create an
image of family life in the American South and illustrate the impact that the
death had on the family. The young girl becomes fixated on discovering the
truth behind his death over one long summer, her adventurous and determined
character is not discouraged by the challenges that arise and she fights her
battles regardless of the dangerous characters that she meets along the way.
In contrast to many other novels I have recently read, Tartt
successfully creates a family that we can picture; their misfortunes impacting
them all in very different ways. Tartt portrays the cruel and poor treatment of
the less fortunate on the outside of town and we are living amongst this
society, with the characters, in the 1970’s.
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