“Harriet M. Welsch has a fondness for egg creams, tomato sandwiches, and obsessively observing the actions of classmates and neighbours in a notebook, going so far as to hide in a dumbwaiter to eavesdrop. The 11-year-old protagonist of Harriet the Spy is curious to the point of nosy, unsentimental to the point of rude, and a refreshing, honestly realized character with a rich inner life. Her dominion never took her through the looking glass or past a phantom tollbooth, but rather confined her to an Upper East Side neighbourhood in Manhattan, where the daily lives of its inhabitants provided the budding writer with rich material.”…READ MORE
