The Secret History in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 16, 2020 Steve rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, crime-mystery-noir

I struggled a bit with the rating. The first half is excellent. There are a few problems, mostly with what seems to be a never-ending autumn for struggling-to-fit-in college student Richard Papen. There are also other problems or improbabilities with the plot and characters, but Tartt wraps her story, at least the first part, in such gorgeous descriptive prose you don't really seem to care. Richard Papen, for instance, the voice that guides us through the story, is a marginal student from a blue I struggled a bit with the rating. The first half is excellent. There are a few problems, mostly with what seems to be a never-ending autumn for struggling-to-fit-in college student Richard Papen. There are also other problems or improbabilities with the plot and characters, but Tartt wraps her story, at least the first part, in such gorgeous descriptive prose you don't really seem to care. Richard Papen, for instance, the voice that guides us through the story, is a marginal student from a blue-collar California family. He has stumbled along in the his college career, but has discovered a knack for the Greek classics. Somehow he snags a substantial scholarship or grant (this is unclear) to an liberal-arts college in Vermont. There he hooks up with a exclusive gathering of other Classics students and trust fund brats. Some of them have had iffy college careers themselves, but with the exception of one, they are incredibly, and casually, despite endless liquor, pills, etc., erudite as hell. This snooty bunch is taught by an enigmatic Classics professor, Julian Morrow, who has a murky past where he, at one time, knew all the beautiful people from other times and places. (Orwell, as you find out later in the book, had his number.) Equally murky is his relationship to the college, which basically allows him to do and teach as he wants.

Again, these improbabilities hardly sink the book. What does sink is the book's shift in Part Two. Gone is the rich prose. What replaces it is a tedious moment by moment account of events following the death of one Richard's classmates, the very unlikable "Bunny." This is not a reveal, since you are told of his death in the novel's first pages. I'm not sure what Tartt was trying to achieve here. Probably black comedy, with all the Dostoevskian door slamming and wild-eyed confrontations. But the book lacks moral focus, which Dostoevsky always delivers. It is a mystery? A comedy? Campus Noir? There is actually an element of horror, that few have remarked on. If anything "The Secret History" seems a large grab-bag of books and authors (the High and the Low) that have influenced Tartt, who then hammered them, however loosely, along with some 80s college partying, into a novel. Tartt is often a gifted a writer, but I think here she reached too far, too soon. It's a mess. ...more

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Dec 12, 2008 MichelleCH rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001

Initially I wasn't fond of the pace...but I came to terms with the subtley of the story. Although described as a murder mystery, I would say that it is more of a dissection of obsessions, both physical and in the ideal. Set in Vermont at a liberal arts college, five students study the classics with their doting yet narcissistic professor. Their study leads to a frightening night and all of them deal with the reprocussions for several months by lying, deceiving and further developing their bizarr ...more

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