‘A frightening, scary book about children...’: the poetics of the novel ‘The little friend’ by D. Tartt

The article is devoted to comprehensive research on the novel The Little Friend by D. Tartt. It investigates the narrative features and genre characteristics of the literary work. The immanent method was used in research to study the narrative model: the symbolic meaning of the title, the specifics of the settings and plot structure, means of characterization, the theme of racial inequality, intertextuality, and photographic ekphrasis in the novel. The contextual method allowed us to identify the features of the ‘southern noir’ in the novel, as well as to consider the traditional and innovative manifestations of the characteristics of young adult literature. The theme of growing up in the novel is associated with traditional motives of loss, experiencing death, illness, mental pain, disappointment, and self-attainment. The Little Friend is third-person narration, this is the only work by D. Tartt where it is used, opposite to the retrospective confessional narration of the novels The Secret History and The Goldfinch. The story is told by the omniscient author who enters the mind of his character. It gives the writer the possibility to focus not only on the inner world of the main characters but also to present the historical and cultural background, as well as to create expressive psychological portraits of the minor characters and their families. The tone of the novel is quite conversational; the narrator is very exact in describing the characters and places. The paper concludes that the novel simultaneously contains the features of young adult fiction - the theme of growing up through overcoming trials (loneliness, loss, fighting the evil / awareness of the illusory nature of ideas about it), and the characteristics of the literature of the American South, the contexts of which play a crucial role for D. Tartt as a writer and a person.