Binal's review
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
Binal's review
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Binal's review
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Does such a thing as "fatal flaw" that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, is a ponderous and entertaining psychological thriller. On a deeper level though, it is a satire of collegiate traditions and popular culture. The novel is a chronicle of the lives of the supposedly brilliant but debauched students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) who're involved in two murders, one supposedly accidental and one deliberate.
The story is narrated by Richard Papen, who comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the "hermetic, overheated atmosphere" of Vermont's Hampden College. Very quickly, he is accepted into a group of five socially sophisticated students who are all Classics majors with a professor who's both a genius an...more
Donna Tartt's first novel, The Secret History, is a ponderous and entertaining psychological thriller. On a deeper level though, it is a satire of collegiate traditions and popular culture. The novel is a chronicle of the lives of the supposedly brilliant but debauched students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) who're involved in two murders, one supposedly accidental and one deliberate.
The story is narrated by Richard Papen, who comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the "hermetic, overheated atmosphere" of Vermont's Hampden College. Very quickly, he is accepted into a group of five socially sophisticated students who are all Classics majors with a professor who's both a genius an...more
