SIMON RECOMMENDS:
"“The Little Friend”
by Donna Tart

I've been saving this one up for a while now. I absolutely loved reading it. In fact the book really became part of my life for a while, like a distant relative who's come on an extended visit. You have to take this book slow, especially at first. You see, the story is set in Alexandra, Texas; the pace is slow, slow and hot, and damp, and decaying, and overgrown with spanish moss. The way DT has written this, you can smell the mildewed carpets and feel the vibrating hysteria that's boiling away, just below the apparently still surface of drug induced calm. DT's second novel which took 10 years to write is the follow up to her incredibly successful, somewhat highbrow - "The Secret History" (which, in retrospect seems stuffy and overblown) is carried by twelve year old Harriet and her self imposed mission to avenge the bizarre murder of her brother Robin 11 years earlier; a death which put an, up to then model, if eccentric southern family into a state of perpetual mourning. She targets Danny Ratcliffe, childhood friend of murdered Robin, now grown-up, lost, middle brother to a younger retarded boy, and an elder drug-dealer/manufacturing ex-con trailer-trash psychopath; oh, then there's the mother...! The story gradually picks up pace, until you reach a point where you literally can't put it down. There is a twist, very clever it is too; not the usual kind of plot twist, but the kind where you realise that the story is not at all about, what you originally thought it was. OK if that doesn't seem to make sense then maybe you should get hold of 'The Little Friend' and try it for yourself.