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The Secret History

Donna Tartt,

Robert Sean Leonard (Narrator)

4.15 · Rating details · 466,600 ratings · 41,963 reviews

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—i ...more

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Paperback, First Vintage Contemporary Edition , 559 pages

Published April 13th 2004 by Vintage (first published September 16th 1992)

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Nov 11, 2019 emma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-thriller-horror-etc, 5-stars, literary-fiction, recommend, beautifully-written, reviewed, reread, classics, owned, dark-academia

My original review of this wasn't much of anything, because I believed (and still kind of do) that everything worth saying about this book has been said.

However, there are things that I believe no one should say emerging in real time, and so contributing my likely already-expressed thoughts might counterbalance them, to some degree.

In my first foray at writing about this (which you can still see below), I focused on the immersion of it. I said I "loved" its characters, though of course I meant m ...more

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Dec 29, 2017 Melanie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: buddy-reads, contemporary, read-in-2018, mystery

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

I have never read anything like this book in my entire life. I laid in bed for over an hour last night upon finishing this book, just tossing and turning and thinking about everything I just consumed. I still don’t think I can put my feelings into words, but I can honestly say this book was a cathartic experience for me, and the irony of the word “catharsis” being a Greek rooted word is not lost on me, because if thi ...more

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Sep 13, 2008 Rebecca rated it did not like it

Recommends it for: no one

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This novel, like so many other first novels, is full of everything that the author wants to show off about herself. Like a freshman who annoys everyone with her overbearing sense of importance and unfathomable potential, Donna Tartt wrote this book as though the world couldn't wait to read about all of the bottled-up personal beliefs, literary references, and colorfully apt metaphors that she had been storing up since the age of 17.

The most fundamentally unlikable thing about this book is that a This novel, like so many other first novels, is full of everything that the author wants to show off about herself. Like a freshman who annoys everyone with her overbearing sense of importance and unfathomable potential, Donna Tartt wrote this book as though the world couldn't wait to read about all of the bottled-up personal beliefs, literary references, and colorfully apt metaphors that she had been storing up since the age of 17.

The most fundamentally unlikable thing about this book is that all of the characters -- each and every one of them -- are snobby, greedy, amoral, pretentious, melodramatic, and selfish. The six main characters are all students at a small and apparently somewhat undemanding college in Vermont, studying ancient Greek with a professor who's so stereotypically gay as to be a homosexual version of a black-face pantomime. In between bouts of translating Greek, the students end up murdering two people, and then devolve into incoherent, drunken, boring decay.

The best thing I can equate this book to is the experience of listening to someone else's dream or listening to a very drunk friend ramble on and on and on, revealing a little too much awkward personal information in the process. The climax of The Secret History's narrative was around page 200, but the book was 500 pages long. So, essentially, this book contained 300 pages of scenes where the characters do nothing but drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, go to the hospital for drinking so much alcohol and smoking so many cigarettes, get pulled over for drunk driving, talk about alcohol and cigarettes, do cocaine, and gossip about each other (while drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes).

Tartt's writing was sometimes genuinely good at establishing a thrilling and suspenseful mood, but other times, especially toward the end, her writing became the kind of self-conscious, contrived, empty prose that I can imagine someone writing just to fill out a page until a good idea comes to them, kind of like how joggers will jog in place while waiting for a traffic light. That kind of writing practice is fine...as long as the editor is smart enough to cut it before the final copy. The last 300 pages were the authorial equivalent of that kind of jogging while going nowhere, and it soured the whole book for me.

In the book's attempt to comment on the privilege, self-interest, and academic snobbery of rich college kids in New England, the book itself comes to be just as self-absorbed and obsessive as its characters -- it turns into a constant litany of unnecessary conversations, sexual tensions that go nowhere, purple prose descriptions of the landscape, contrived plot twists that fizzle out, and forced, overblown metaphors.

The confusing part was that Tartt seemed to identify with (and expect us to identify with) these students -- not to admire them for murdering people, obviously, but to respect and envy their precious contempt for everything modern and popular, as though they lived on a higher plane than normal people. The cliche of academic types being remote from the mundane world and out of touch with reality may have a grain of truth to it, but Tartt took that cliche way too far. The story is set in the early 90s, and yet some of the characters had never heard of ATMs, and they still wrote with fountain pens, drove stick shift cars, cultivated roses in their backyards, wore suits and ties to class, and said things like, "I say, old man!" Did I mention that this story is set in the early 90s? It got to the point where all the anachronisms came to seem ridiculous and gratuitous.

Ostensibly, the point of the novel was to critique the point of view that privileged academics are somehow superior to the average person, but Tartt seemed too enamored of her own characters and the endearing way they held cigarettes between their fingers to really allow that kind of critique to be successful. Maybe Tartt's second novel managed to get away from the claustrophobic selfishness of The Secret History, but I don't feel up to reading it after this. ...more

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Feb 24, 2008 Martine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: psychological-drama, modern-fiction, thriller, favourites, north-american

The first paragraph of The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw is 'a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs'. If you can relate to these words, chances are you'll love The Secret History. If not, you'll probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Personally, I can totally relate to these words, so I love the book. I've read it over half a dozen times, and while I do think it has its problems, I never The first paragraph of The Secret History roughly sums up the mood of the book. In it, the narrator, Richard Papen, says that he thinks his fatal flaw is 'a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs'. If you can relate to these words, chances are you'll love The Secret History. If not, you'll probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Personally, I can totally relate to these words, so I love the book. I've read it over half a dozen times, and while I do think it has its problems, I never fail to find it utterly gripping.

The Secret History is both an intellectual novel of ideas and a murder mystery without the whodunnit element. The reader learns right on the first page that Richard and his friends have killed one among their midst. The rest of the book goes on to explain how they came to their gruesome deed and what happened to them afterwards. Against all odds, it makes for compelling reading, despite the fact that you know right from the start who the killers are. Such is the power of Tartt's writing that you find yourself turning page after page, waiting for answers, justifications and possibly a sign of remorse. Once these have been dealt with, the book loses a bit of its power, but until that time, it's near perfect.

Donna Tartt's great gift as a writer is her magnificent talent for description. Her evocation of life at a small private university in New England with its oddball mix of ivory-tower intellectuals and ditzy cokeheads is rich in detail, both shocking and funny. If it's not entirely realistic, she makes it so. Likewise, her skill at characterisation is superb. While Richard is not entirely convincing as a male narrator (a fact I find more noticeable every time I re-read the book), he and his friends make up a fascinating cast of characters: six aloof, self-absorbed and arrogant intellectuals who are obsessed with ancient Greece and don't particularly care for modern life. They're snobs and they have major issues, but somehow that only makes them more alluring. Together, they form the ultimate inner circle, the kind of tight-knit group you know should always stay together. Which makes it almost understandable that they should be willing to kill anyone who might jeopardise that group dynamic, incomprehensible though this may seem to the average reader.

I can think of many reasons why The Secret History strikes such a chord with me. For one thing, I have a thing for timeless and ethereal stories, and this is one of those. Somehow the book has a dreamlike, almost hypnotic quality, despite it being very firmly set in the rather unromantic 1980s. I love that. For another thing, I have always been drawn to the unabashedly intellectual, and this book has that in spades. It makes geekdom alluring, and I just love Tartt for that. I wish I were as geeky as Henry!

Ultimately, what I think I respond to most in The Secret History is the friendship aspect. The Secret History is very much a book about friendship. It's about the very human yearning to belong and be accepted by people we admire. It's about the sacrifices we make to keep friendships intact, the insecurity we feel when we think we might not be completely accepted by our friends after all, and the paranoia we experience when it seems our friends may have betrayed us. About the feeling of invincibility we get from having great friends, and the melancholy and loneliness that follow the disintegration of a once-great friendship. The book basically reads like an elegy on a great friendship, and one doesn't necessarily have to share Richard's intellectual attitude towards life, his morality or even his morbid longing for the picturesque to be able to relate to that. It's enough to have yearned for close friendship and been insecure in friendship. And let's face it, who hasn't?

I do not think The Secret History is a perfect book. As I said, I find Richard somewhat unconvincing as a male character; there is too much about him that screams 'female author' to me. Furthermore, the ending is decidedly weak, although to be fair, I have no idea how else Tartt could have finished her book. The story does seem to be inexorably heading in that particular direction. Insofar as the ending reflects the disintegration that is going on in the characters' lives, it could probably be said to be appropriate. Still, I wish Tartt could have come up with something on a par with the rest of the book. If she had, this would have been a six-star book. I don't know many of those.
...more

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Apr 20, 2019 jessica rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites

‘beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. quite the contrary. genuine beauty is always quite alarming.’

and oh, how alarmingly beautiful this story is, as all the best greek tragedies tend to be; full of sorrow and struggle, but often accompanied by pure loyalty and divine inspiration.

gosh. i just… i cant even right now. on the surface, this book is great. but donna tartt is an absolute goddess of writing for the sheer depth of this book. its a work of absolute brilliance.

i was never a classic ...more

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Aug 08, 2013 Paquita Maria Sanchez added it

Shelves: literature

First of all, if you are one of those people who dismiss a book as inherently bad simply because you "just couldn't relaaa-yeeete to aunnny of the charaaactaaaars *gum smack-smack-smack*" then do not read this book. If you can relate to anyone in this novel, then I dismiss you as inherently bad. In fact, I fucking hate you. Yes, you, because my guess is that, as a modern-day example of all the characters in this novel, you probably have a goodreads account, and read nothing but "tome-suh" and wr First of all, if you are one of those people who dismiss a book as inherently bad simply because you "just couldn't relaaa-yeeete to aunnny of the charaaactaaaars *gum smack-smack-smack*" then do not read this book. If you can relate to anyone in this novel, then I dismiss you as inherently bad. In fact, I fucking hate you. Yes, you, because my guess is that, as a modern-day example of all the characters in this novel, you probably have a goodreads account, and read nothing but "tome-suh" and write snide, condescending, long-winded comments and boring as a brochure reviews jerking off whatever dense novelist or philosopher had previously caught the fancy of whatever other dense novelist or philosopher you had previously jerked off. You blindly, unquestioningly, and completely assume the opinions of the few people on planet Earth who you so happen to think are, by some random blip in the universe, smarter than you. Oh, and remember when we went on that date when I was in Austin, and it was the worst night of my life? You just wanted to hear yourself talk, and you acted so astonished to have some wittle woman laughing at your prefab philosophical wankery? Coffee house intellectuals, here is your mirror. Now shuddup.

What a pressure-cooker. This is a 500+ that you read like a 200-pager, and watching Donna Tartt unspin her spool is really a delight (damn, you mean it's an enjoyable novel?? Pass!). Basically, I don't want to give too much away, but a bunch of insufferable Classics students get swept up in an Ancient Greek religious ceremony which results in some very real entanglements with both the law and icky human nature. Gosh, I really can't say much else without dowsing you in the spoilies, and I don't want to be an asshole. Like every single character in this story. I truly cannot stress that enough.

The best aspect of the novel for me was witnessing the aftermath of an untimely death. One of the main reasons I despise facebook at this point in my life is witnessing the carnage that ensues when someone passes away. All that misplaced emotional exhibitionism. Tartt really nails it when she's discussing the ricocheting effect that the death of our just godawfully full of shit character "Bunny" has on his campus*. All those melodramatic boo-hoos like everybody in the entire city knew him oh-so-well. I've watched this happen several times, and it kinda makes me sick in my gut-parts, and embarrassed for everyone, forever. It's one thing to mourn, but it's quite another to leach on other peoples' misery and milk it for attention or just something to do, and the death of a young person just really brings that out in people. And man, Tartt pins it down here. And it's gross and awkward, like it do.

*This is not a spoiler, unless you consider something mentioned in literally the first sentence of the prologue to be a spoiler.

Oh, the narrator, you ask? Yeah, he's an asshole, too. Don't seek comfort there, because he's basically nothing more than a lie factory wallpapered in tweed. In fact, it's really pretty rare to come across so many awful people in a single novel unless you're reading, say, Wuthering Heights. If there is even one slightly endurable character in the novel, it is Camilla, and she just sort of flitters in and out of scenes, apparition-esque, nigh unreadable, almost like one of Jeffrey Euginedes' virgins. And she spends all her time with these windbags, so...

I don't know what else to say. Murder mystery. Late 80's, early 90's private college setting. Prep school intellectual snoots with lossa monies. Shiny prose. Fast pace woven out of not too much actual plot. Good shit all around.

Thanks are once again in order to goodreader Janice for spoiling me with wonderful free things. And she gave me not one, but two Donna Tartt novels! Thanks, Janice! Did I review better this time? No? Well, there's still hope. I may revisit this and essplain myself better than my "I woke up at noon and haven't had coffee yet" self is able, but every time I say that it ends up just being an empty promise. Almost as empty as the characters in this novel. And you if you are the sort of person who relates to the characters in this novel. Let me restate how much I hate you. ...more

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Jul 21, 2017 Adina rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1001, book-club, us

DNF at 70%

“If you love one book by a certain author it does not automatically mean you will enjoy all the author’s work” (Me, while reading The Secret History) .

Before I begin my review I have to inform you that Goldfinch is one of my favorite novels. If you want, you can see my short review here. Based on that fact, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind of how much I love Donna Tartt’s writing. I thought it was perfect in the first novel I read by her, it kept me coming back for more eac ...more

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Nov 18, 2007 Paul Bryant rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

Apparently the New York Times described The Secret History as "Powerful...Enthralling...A ferociously well-paced entertainment" and Time said "A smart, craftsman-like, viscerally compelling novel."

Very funny, guys, ha ha and all that. They're such jolly jokesters. They'll have you believing anything. The Secret History is complete tripe - no, that's harsh, let me put it another way - it's COMPLETE TRIPE - oh dear, this keyboard has a mind of its own! and is very firm about its opinions too! - b ...more

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Apr 23, 2020 chan ☆ marked it as to-read

Shelves: on-pause, 2021

on pause

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Jan 09, 2022 ❀ annie ❀ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews, fiction, 2022, favourites

achingly pretentious. insufferably wordy. and probably one of the best books i've ever read. i don't think i've ever wished a 600+ page book was even longer. ...more

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Apr 13, 2020 ✨ A ✨ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: debut, all-the-stars-in-the-sky, adult, read-in-2020, thriller, dark-academia, five-stars, faves-adult-mystery-thriller, buddy-read

I don't know about you, but what I strive for is finding my next great read. They're not always perfect. Sometimes they have messed up shit in them, BUT they leave me dumbfounded and in awe. Days after I find myself doing something completely mundane and unable to stop thinking about the story and the characters. That's what The Secret History did to me.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be ab ...more

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Dec 27, 2014 Barry Pierce rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, read-in-2014, read-in-2018

Due to my utter adoration for The Goldfinch I decided, for reasons unbeknownst to even myself, that I should give The Secret History another go. See I read it maybe four years ago, I want to say, and I wasn’t the biggest fan. And ever since then I’ve had people constantly telling me just how wrong I was about The Secret History. ‘No, no, it’s a modern classic!’ they’d say to me. Or, ‘wow it seems exactly like the type of book you’d adore.’ And they’re right, it is exactly the type of book I’d ad Due to my utter adoration for The Goldfinch I decided, for reasons unbeknownst to even myself, that I should give The Secret History another go. See I read it maybe four years ago, I want to say, and I wasn’t the biggest fan. And ever since then I’ve had people constantly telling me just how wrong I was about The Secret History. ‘No, no, it’s a modern classic!’ they’d say to me. Or, ‘wow it seems exactly like the type of book you’d adore.’ And they’re right, it is exactly the type of book I’d adore. So why can I not bring myself around to loving it?

The Secret History is very much a tale of two novels, the split between them coming when Bunny dies. And that isn’t a spoiler, we’re told in the first line that Bunny dies. The first book being the lead up and the second book being the aftermath, with the group just trying to deal with the fact that they actually killed Bunny. Once again, not a spoiler, we’re told on the first page that the group kill Bunny. And if you don’t like even the first pages of novels being spoiled then I suggest you should go outside more often.

Side note: it’s rather depressing to read this novel when you’re the same age as the characters. I felt so under-read. But then I remembered they’re all fictional, so fuck them.

The first book is actually quite good. It’s all wonderfully tense as the reader is just waiting for the murder to happen. The inverted murder mystery, which oftentimes does not work, works fantastically here and you wouldn’t be talked over if you referred to The Secret History as perhaps the best example of the whydunit genre.

Then my biggest problem with the novel happens: the entire second half. What a fucking slog. Like, jesus. Okay Donna just because you’re writing about a funeral doesn’t mean that the novel itself has to become funereal. The whole book just becomes ‘oh aren’t we really sad!’ and ‘ugh it’s tough being murderers!’ And I think, tell me if I’m wrong here, I think Tartt expects us to sympathise with these fucking monsters. I mean, I’ve sympathised with murderers before. I think Aileen Wuornos had a fairly sound motive. The Unabomber made some good points. But this ragtag group of Enid Blyton rejects? Nah. Not a chance.

So what do I think of The Secret History the second time around? Much the same as the first time really. I did enjoy some parts more, especially the first half. I’ll be kind, I’ll bump my star rating up one. Congrats Donna, I now think your first novel is perfectly average! I’m happy for us both.

Oh, and isn’t Judy Poovey just the greatest name of a fictional character in the history of Western literature? Judy Poovey. I want to get to know you. ...more

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Nov 04, 2020 ELLIAS (elliasreads) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020-books, thriller-mystery

BEAUTY IS TERROR.

That should have been the title of this book, how each of the titular character views beauty.....and the unholy terror that comes from it.

Spoiler Discussion Live show here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSNew...

Imagine if someone took a simple generic thriller mystery plot but added Latin phrases, subtle Greek history and references, a study of philosophy and logic, and unlikeable, privileged, and pretentious college students— you get this dense, ironic, well crafted ...more

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Oct 31, 2020 Joel Rochester rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2020, three-stars, late-night-book-club

i wanted to love this book.
i like it, but i also have issues.

there's a lot of good things with this book, but it's equally balanced with things that i didn't like or just made me question this book.

join us for the liveshow tomorrow!
for now,
no thoughts, head empty. ...more

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Jul 08, 2007 Zweegas rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 08, 2020 Baba rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: this-book-tho, modernclassic, literary-fiction

A truly modern classic masterpiece - Tartt's first offering as a writer is this juggernaut - a descent into evil, unreliably narrated by the newest addition to a group of highly eccentric elitist misfits, who form a group around a just as eccentric classics professor at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Within this microcosm, they are creating their own norms and in time, their own morality, which leads to a descent to evil.

A masterclass in scene setting and character development from a f ...more

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Nov 22, 2019 Candi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-literary, mystery-crime, book-i-own, favorites, chunksters

"Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."

Hot damn this book was brilliant! I’m officially joining the ranks of Donna Tartt fans. Three things happened after I finished this book: 1) I wanted to start all over again 2) I had difficulty reading the books I chose next (even though they are ...more

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Mar 12, 2014 nostalgebraist rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit

Thank god it's over. I don't think I can surpass the review Nick wrote earlier tonight, but here goes . . .

The good:

--This book is well-written, at least in a certain contextless sense. There are many sentences in it (occasionally, even paragraphs) that, if taken by themselves, look like they might have been from a book worth reading.

--At least two of the central characters (I'm thinking of Bunny and Henry) are vividly portrayed and interesting figures. (Unfortunately, one of them dies halfway ...more

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Sep 29, 2017 Eliza rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those who loved The Goldfinch (and anyone else!)

Shelves: thriller, mystery, 5-stars, painful-withdrawals, owned, favorites, original-idea, reviewed, fiction

2019

The fact that I STILL think about this book every other week really makes me to want to label this as my #1 favorite book. It's literally the best thing I have read up until this point. What a mind-blowing novel.
________________________________________

Re-read in 2018

Still flipping amazing.
I. Love. This. Book.
________________________________________
5/5 Stars!

EDIT:
I read this about two months ago, but I'm still thinking about it! Therefore, I bumped it up half a star, and changed my overall ...more

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Sep 25, 2007 Joe Hill rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: anyone

Someone just brought up Nietzsche’s Apollonian vs. Dionysian theory, which is described at the link below, if you are as unfamiliar as I was. http://www.geocities.com/danielmacrya...

Apparently Donna Tartt was well-versed in this theme, as it is prevalent in The Secret History. The gist of Nietzsche’s theory is that the ancient Greeks attained such a high level of culture mainly due to their personal struggle between the opposing philosophies of Apollo and Dionysus; Apollo being the god of art, a ...more

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Jun 19, 2017 Sam rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017-reads, aty-challenge-2017

I understand why The Secret History is loathed as much as it is loved. If I remove myself a bit from what I just read, I note implausible dialogue and somewhat unbelievable plot elements, horrifically selfish and nasty main characters, overflowing with evil, sure, but mostly with ennui and snobbery and drunkenness and poor-little-rich-people and an air of erudition that's more smokescreen than substance.

I can admit to all of that objectively. Subjectively, I feverishly read this in a day and fou I understand why The Secret History is loathed as much as it is loved. If I remove myself a bit from what I just read, I note implausible dialogue and somewhat unbelievable plot elements, horrifically selfish and nasty main characters, overflowing with evil, sure, but mostly with ennui and snobbery and drunkenness and poor-little-rich-people and an air of erudition that's more smokescreen than substance.

I can admit to all of that objectively. Subjectively, I feverishly read this in a day and found it literally unputdownable, obscuring my copy under my desk to finish the last 50 pages at work. I can't tell if I suspended my disbelief, or fully believed and drank the Kool-Aid, or some combination of both. All I can say is that this book seized hold of me and refused to let go, lured me and seduced me with Tartt's picturesque, poetic language and description, the sustained tension and ominous mood, and the intricacies of the dark, feral, brutal natures and impulses that lurk underneath beautiful, polished surfaces. I was compelled to savor the details, but also desperate to turn the pages and read more. I was by turns irritated, disgusted, sympathetic, contemplative of the relationships and actions and reactions of Henry, Bunny, Francis, Charles and Camilla, and though I wouldn't say any rank among the more memorable characters I've read, they ended up being as magnetic as Richard the narrator first found them to be, even if in the end I was repelled by them rather than attracted. I could not look away, I was completely captured and in their and Tartt's spell. And I came to satisfied and unsettled by my satisfaction, as though I shouldn't have liked or enjoyed or been so captivated by such a tale.

This book is wicked. I can see how wicked can mean evil/unpleasant, or a New England style excellent for this read, and completely understand its polarizing nature. If you haven't read The Secret History yet and are debating about it, I'd recommend trying it if you're a fan of dense literary novels and don't always need a moral paragon to root for. And if you do decide to pick it up, I can only urge to try as hard as you can to suspend your disbelief and get caught in the web... I can't tell if I devoured it or it devoured me, or both, but either way I loved this wicked book. 4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars, with a future re-read all but guaranteed. ...more

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May 17, 2017 Jim Fonseca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorite-books, psychological-thriller, american-authors

Six students at an Ivy League college latch on to an elderly professor of Greek. They create a Greek “cult” that leads to murder and, in all, the death of three people. The story is told from the point of view of the outsider in the group: he’s the only kid from the west coast and the only one on financial aid. All the misfit characters come alive, each with his (and one her) personality. The story is told methodically, step by step, and you start to feel “this could have really happened.” A gre ...more

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Mar 09, 2020 emily ☂︎ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: readathon, 2020, to-reread, favorites

thank god i’m in self isolation right now because i feel like i need at least 2838373 decades to recover from this book. what, in all due respect, THE FUCK???

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May 17, 2008 Annet rated it it was amazing

Shelves: coming-of-age, dark, have-to-read-again, literature-pure, favorite-author, brilliant, wow-impressive, classics, hope, favorites

One of my all time favorites. It's been a while since I read it, have to reread it soon. Great story, very intelligent, very fascinating, keeps you going on and on page by page until the end. Remember reading it on a camping trip in Canada! Simply brilliant. Top ten best reads ever. ...more

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Jul 31, 2014 nemo the emo ☠️ (pagesandprozac) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: life-on-the-murder-scene, physical-books-i-own, incesticide, general-fiction, adult, action-thriller-suspense, read-more-than-once, mystery, 5-star

ok real talk i didn't know what tf Classics was until i read this and then i thought "hey this is canny interesting" so i signed up for a classics summer school at oxford and it turned out half the people there also ended up there bc of this mcfucking book and then the professors were all like "congrats bc the selection process was even more selective bc we had loads of applicants this year" and we were all just sitting there trying to pretend that we didn't end up there because of a book about ...more

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Sep 04, 2007 Jamie rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Katie McCrackin

Okay, this book. This book was a lot of fun, partially, I think, because it was written in this fashion which made determining whether this was past, present or future virtually impossible. It was very romantically written and I tend to go for that sort of thing: simple meals of tomato soup and skim milk, five college-aged students who drink tea as well as burbon, scotch and on occasion whiskey--but not with anything as muddled and middle-class as coke mixed in--no, they drink it on ice, in thic Okay, this book. This book was a lot of fun, partially, I think, because it was written in this fashion which made determining whether this was past, present or future virtually impossible. It was very romantically written and I tend to go for that sort of thing: simple meals of tomato soup and skim milk, five college-aged students who drink tea as well as burbon, scotch and on occasion whiskey--but not with anything as muddled and middle-class as coke mixed in--no, they drink it on ice, in thick lead-glass tumblers while spending weekends in a shabby (as only the very wealthy can have) weekend "cottage" which is actually a massive Victorian on the New England coast with a grounds keeper.

The boys are called "eccentric" but eccentric doesn't quite cut it. They are like no boys I've ever met: dressing souly in dark suits and silken cravats, while the lone female is called Camilla, smokes, speaks with a gravely femme-fatale voice and wears over-sized cashmere sweaters and is compared, looks-wise, to Helen of Troy.

This being said, perhaps it's not the most believable of novels, pray tell, however, it is EXACTLY what I LOVE in novels. Granted, there's a murder and some ghastly stuff, but I would much prefer life if it were like this: if No Fear T-shirts had never been invented, if teenagers said "I suppose" and didn't own televisions. If I really had met a girl in college who kept dusty tea-cups and water glasses filled with dandilions on her bedside table.

It was a beautiful book with great character development. It got a little to "masterpiece theater" on me at the end and while one twist would have been enough, there was instead a teather of strings going every-which way...but man what a lovely way to get a little bored...It was so well written, so crisp and precise, so pretty and...novel-like. I haven't been so inspired by setting since Edith Wharton. Really.

This would have been, sans the creepy, the way I HOPED my liberal arts experience would be, instead of over-weight girls with fake tans and highlights, birth-control contrived boobs and Ann Taylor, Banana Republic wanna-be classy with dimpled upper arms. I never met a Camilla, Charles or Henry. What a shame...kind of. I really prefer books to people.

**I write on books and other stuff at www.snapshotnarrative.tumblr.com ...more

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Mar 01, 2021 mwana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to mwana by: Kyle

Shelves: literary, classic, historical, favorites-2021, hall-of-fame

Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw’, that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

For Richard, this starts after he moves from Plano, California to Hampden College. Even the name had an austere Anglican cadence, to my ear at least, which yearned hopelessly for England and was dead to the sweet dark rhythms of the little mission towns. There he meets Greek students Henry, Francis, the twins: Charles and Camilla, and Bunny. Or as their Classics instructor, budding cult leader, Julian describes them:

genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus-- smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, well-educated, and rich.

This is a character driven book and has one of the most vibrant examinations of the human condition I’ve ever come across. Most notable, for me at least is Henry. Part Sherlock Holmes, part Regina George… he was remarkable, evocative, admirable and the kind of man I’d need to microdose on should I want to enjoy him recreationally. A lot of the muslin-thin plot is driven by Henry’s decision making (yes, Richard is a one-note observer of the life and times of these notorious five but he’s still a stout narrator).

I fell in love with Henry when he was asked how he could so casually justify premeditated murder.

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?”
Henry lit a cigarette, “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”

This story gains its wheels once Richard gains entry into the core friendship. As the modern day narrator Richard is recollecting these tragic events that occurred while he was at college, he tells us:

“It is easy to see things in retrospect, but I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together, some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery…”

I was so hooked and eager to see what they would do. Even if it was just accompanying them in their day-to-day life. Even their classes were fun to sit in on. Their comparisons of Roman and Greek philosophies, their vague romanticizing of Bacchanalia,

“Beauty is terror. We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us.”

But perhaps this book’s greatest strength is how remarkably easy it is to read. I went in expecting dense prose and drowning by vocabulary but apart from the odd word or turn of Latin phrase, this book was easy to devour. It was also very descriptive. Tartt has a way with words that is both immersive and ambient. Not only was I right there in the room with Richard as he shared with me his story, I could feel what every character on page was feeling. Tartt’s prose leaves a lot for the reader to infer and there’s nothing I love more than an author who can trust their audience.

The most vivid thing for me was how what Richard found so beautiful in the beginning unearths itself to be rotten to the core. In his inadvertent journey of self-discovery after all the unpleasant things they do (like a naked forest ritual to invoke Dionysus that results in tragedy), Richard watches as this facade slowly unravels itself. His esteemed friends are a highly flawed lot. Even the bombastic sybarite Bunny who was at first fun turned out to be bigoted and with an annoying habit of leaving his friends with an inflated bill.

This is a story about a man who got himself caught up in a world he couldn’t escape. (I wouldn't want to either. Who doesn't want wealthy friends with country estates where we can indulge in creative drug use, gourmet coffee, and have civil discussions about the validity of Plato's definition of justice). But even after his golden friends lost their glitter, Richard saw the futility of getting out.

Without warning I had a vision of Francis- twenty years later, fifty years, in a wheelchair. And of myself- older, too, sitting around with him in some smokey room, the two of us repeating this exchange for the thousandth time. At one time I had liked the idea, that the act, at least, had bound us together, we were not ordinary friends, but friends till-death-do-us-part. This thought had been my only comfort in the aftermath… Now it made me sick, knowing there was no way out. I was stuck with them, with all of them, for good.

This is a book that will stay with me for years. Often, when I was revisiting my notes I would find myself rereading and would have to stop myself because other books exist that deserve to be read. A whydunnit tale, about a group of students who cause death and destruction in their pursuit to see god but still have to worry about their Greek homework is one of the greatest books I've ever read.

Consummatum est.

...more

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Sep 26, 2020 Sanne | Booksandquills rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, dark-reads

So glad to have finally read this! I've owned this copy for a fair few years and organising a book club for it was a good push to read it (I'm afraid it would have been on my shelves for many more years to come otherwise). It was a quicker read than I expected and both fulfilled lots of the ideas I had about it (in the best way), but also surprised me in quite a few places. It was equally more gory than I thought it would be, and at the same time almost not gory enough! It immediately sucks you ...more

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Jun 21, 2012 Arah-Lynda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: top, lets-get-real, killer-prose, i-said, lod, to-the-island

And after we stood whispering in the underbrush – one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everything? – and then started single file through the woods, I took one glance back through the saplings that leapt to close the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first lonely flakes of snow that came drifting through the pines, remember piling gratefully into the car and starting down the road like a family on vacation, with Henry ...more

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Nov 17, 2021 elle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021, 2021-faves, all-time-gems, 5-stars, 2020, 2022, 2018, 2018-faves

posted my annotations & annotation guide for the secret history on my bookstagram! also my review.

i will probably be posting chapter by chapter reading guides on my instagram so stay tuned!

—————————

here is the very long awaited review of one of my favorite books.

i first read the secret history for class in high school, then two times after that. it is, without a doubt, always in my top 5 list of books. i’m sure i’m not special in that case, because this book is a true testament to the genius and ...more

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About Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt

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Donna Tartt is an American writer who received critical acclaim for her first two novels, The Secret History and The Little Friend, which have been translated into thirty languages. Tartt was the 2003 winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend. Her novel The Goldfinch won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi but r ...more

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“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” — 4156 likes

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” — 1812 likes

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