Descent

My current summer reading selection, Donna Tartt's The Little Friend keeps going further and further downhill. I've previously described it as being like To Kill a Mockingbird - but I'm going to have to take that back. Mockingbird was about facing our childhood fears, realizing that there was evil in world - and that it (like the true good) wasn't always where you expect it. This is the type of story you expect from TLF; but it seems to slope away from Attiticus and Scout at an alarming rate.

Oddly, the most sinister indication of the slippery slope (the date) is never directly identified in the story. The first few pages, seem to evoke the days of innocence following the first world war in the deep south. Bicycle rides down to the grain bin and catching frogs by the fishin' hole reminded the reader of a Norman Rockwell painting. Even hearing the story of Robin death (Harriet's older brother) that happened when she was just a baby is quaint and nostalgic as if it was the only evil thing to ever happen in Alexandria Mississippi. Gradually though, as the story progresses, little hints appear that jar the reader into the realization that this isn't the late 30's (a neighbor's son died in the South Pacific) .. It isn't the 40's (There is a TV in a poor family's living room) ... It isn't the 50's (an "old" car was made in 1956) ... It isn't the early 60's (Kings march to Selma has already happened). Finally, a third into the book we are given hard clue when we learn that Harriet's sister Allison watches Dark Shadows (66-71). This date-creep is unsettling and leaves the reader with a wholly different view of the events.

Robin's death, which is described initially as a composite of fragmented memories Harriet has heard about all her life from her family, is telegraphed early in the story as the worst kind of evil quickly becomes but a single symptom of the communities failing moral health. We soon see that Harriet's family (mom, sister, grandma, and great aunts) only acknowledge the death because they are incapable of hiding it. All the other darkness that surrounds them is too horrible to be seen. It starts slowly: Harriet's Dad lives in Nashville (with another woman) .... The local car dealer (and Sunday School Teacher) is greedy ...There is domestic violence in the neighborhood ... Racism still permeates the community .... And then there is the Meth.

About the same time we figure out what year it is, we get to see life through the eyes of a Crystal Meth-freak named Johnny Ratlin. Johnny was in school with Robin and now lives in a trailer next to the Taxidermy/Meth Lab shack of his older brother. He fires his pistol at old black ladies down by the fishing hole and beats us pool sharks for money. But Johnny's actions aren't all that troubling - but seeing the world from his eyes while 'tweaked' is horrid - yet euphoric.


I'm still only half-way through the novel ... But I wonder how far into despair this town will fall?