The Secret History by Donna Tartt REVIEW
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- Опубліковано 28 січ 2022
- Those kids carpe diem'd a little bit too hard.
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The big twist for me is that they did what they did for a way more petty and vapid reason than you initially think. The genius of the book, in my opinion, is that Tartt makes you fall in love with academia in the first half to make you believe that the gruesome act was justified and spends the second half examining how this almost robotic love for aesthetics and academica caused these people to do something so horrible. This is definitely highlighted in the dream sequence at the end.
yes, this is the premise of the book, but I never saw her actually do it in the course of the novel.
This novel is one of my all-time favorites. I can’t think of any other set of characters who are so fleshed out; it seems like I know exactly how they look and dress, their voices, their smells, their music and food preferences, etc. It contains one of the best examples of simple yet subtle and effective manipulations of the reader in the winter break section, when its very length and boredom lead not only the narrator but us as the reader to come to view the character who ends it all as the savior figure. I was surprised how well this effect held up in my second reading despite my knowledge of the entire plot. And I love the second half of the book precisely for that unraveling of the personas and fantasies constructed in the first half and being forced to reconsider them in the light of darker and more uncomfortable truths. My only complaint is that the writing of the first half is a bit too tight for my taste, I’d have added at least another 100-150 pages to it.
such a great comment!!
I know I'm late here, but I couldn't help adding that your way of describing the book is spot on. I've seen lots of reviews on this book, but your descriptions & perception of events are really well
done.
Thanks for that! I love this book by the way. 😊
Thank Terry :)
I have ADD and am plot driven, so Tartt is a slug for me and I enjoy more the memories of it than the actual reading experience. I was almost moaning with despair as I turned the pages lol. I will always remember the winter attic scenes, I live in Canada and they rang such a bell, it remains one of my strongest reading memories ever. Goldfinch resembles Secret a lot but its changing settings are almost like vignettes. I think of Tartt’s books as pretend thrillers and both are similar yet different. You should enjoy it.
Foreshadowing is wonderful when it works well - opening sentence of 100 year of solitude (and Chronicle of a death foretold too of course).
Just came from a video essay on House of Leaves and stumbled upon your channel: really happy I did! Was really needing some guidance on interesting reads!
Read this book at a younger age and was totally drawn in and hooked, have very fond memories but not going to ever read it again because my memories are so great for this novel I don't want to be disappointed on a 2nd read, much like with Stephen King's 'The Stand', which I read when I was 13 and was completely absorbed for 3 days but will never read it again.
Go ahead and read it again - it was such a great book it won't disappoint
That’s a great observation about The Secret History. Wishing it wouldn’t happen and the dissonance does make it gripping. Especially with the rich prose where you get lost in the story and the dynamics. Felt like it had a lot to say on parasocial relationships too.
Great review. As the book goes on, as Bunny's character & personality flaws keep glaring and growing, he's taking on near monstrous proportions to me. And yet, people like this really exist in the world. I think the best way to analyze his characteristics is the definition of a "Cluster B personality disorder." As I continue to read (I'm on page 199), my sympathy and empathy for Bunny continues to decrease, page by page. At this point, I doubt I'll feel any sadness when he meets his bad demise.
Also, in the mid-1980s, I was in a (Koine) Greek class that lasted 2.5 years (five semesters), in a liberal arts university near Santa Cruz, CA. Each semester, our class size varied from 10 to 6 students, due to the weaker ones dropping out when the pressure became unbearable. Our professor, Dr. James Rider, was a true eccentric. Whenever someone would complain about the workload he would say in a creaky voice, "Don't squall like a mashed cat." Many of the other (non Greek & Hebrew) students viewed us as elite and snobbish. But we were never isolated from the rest of the student body as were the book's characters. Having this background makes me love the book even more!
And finally, the way Donna Tartt brings together several odd and rather troubled characters and, plays them off each other, is reminiscent to me of Iris Murdoch.
I just finished this book yesterday, nice
I did read Goldfinch. I did enjoy reading it. I just ordered the secret history.
DROPS EVERYTHING! ☕
I liked the book but I had a hard time finishing it. I have ADD and reading a book that have chapters that are 40-60 pages long is a real chore for me. I could have read a 600+ page book with short chapters, like FP or anything by Neal Stephenson, twice in the time it took me to get through this one.
The writing and story was really engaging though. I’d recommend The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason for a similar experience. I don’t see many people talking about it, but I really liked that book. You could get through it in a day or two and it won’t change your world, but it’s a really nice little thriller with similar themes to The Secret History.
This book worked great for me as an audiobook- I have ADD as well.
In case you didn't know, your boy Jonathan Lethem also went to Bennington together with Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt.
Dude, this is great. That's the book I'm currently reading.
One of my favorite writers, this is probably I guess if I had to, it’s not my favorite out of all her books.
I remember loving The Secret History when it first came out, but never going back to it because her subsequent books turned me off so completely. I found them so unreadable, they soured my memory of The Secret History as well.
You should review Miranda July's The First Bad Man!
I share your particular disappointment, but felt it more keenly. I can’t say that I enjoyed or even admired the story. Perhaps it is fair to say I dislike books that rope me in only to willfully withhold what they teased.
I am not sure if you would be reading my comments, but if you are, I think you understand that I am going down in a rabbit hole of you channel :))) So... just a short comment on this video, and the book, which I read a couple of years ago but just no longer than today discussed it with a friend who just finished it. I agree with everything you said, and it is absolutely 1. a page-turner, and 2. great novel to read. But you know what, I also didn't enjoy the second half as much as the first, and I also excused my opinion and always did what you did - said that Donna Tartt's still great and she must have done something good, which I just didn't appreciate due to some limitations. BUT now you said it too. And my friend today said the same thing... so I am started to doubt the greatness of the author, unfortunately. Especially considering that I also read the other two of her books, and although there was some good parts and good pleasure of reading them, I had some issue of another with both of the books, similar to the issue discussed above. Somehow, in ll her books Donna Tartt manages to disappoint me with the choice of structure and where the story goes and how the book ends. That's it. I said it!
I have another comment which I wanted to express - about the talent of revealing the twist in the beginning on the book. Thinking of it, I find Nabokov to be the master of such thing. Have you read/reviewed any of his books? I haven't noticed, but I will check more thoroughly. So, starting from Lolita, to Laughter in the Dark, to Invitation to a Beheading - they all start with the full disclosure of what's going to happen in the end, but all of them are so brilliantly written and grasp the readers' attention till the end.
From what I remember, Mattia (aka the Bookchemist) hates Nabokov, and it's a shame, as I think Nabokov is a genius. As for Donna Tartt, I couldn't even finish this book: too disappointing.
I started this book briefly a while ago but put it down to finish reading some other stuff. Thanks for your review, it makes me excited to get back to it again! I know I'm going to like it a lot, so I wanted to save it for a good opportunity. Does anybody else do that with good books lol?
I definitely do it with certain authors - Philip Roth would be one, or David Mitchell, and until recently Umberto Eco - who I generally like a lot, but who I read very rarely to "save" these pleasures for the future :)
Please do an INFINITE JEST READING PROJECT
For me I liked The Secret History better than The Little Friend and The Goldfinch. I had a hard time with The Little Friend - it reads as if in a dreamy state with the gloss of a high fever. Perhaps that is the point since the main character is ill with epilepsy, but no one has noticed. The Goldfinch was good, but it almost felt as if the book just evolved without having a point and seemed all over the place. Still, Ms. Tartt remains my favorite author and I look forward to the next book. Happy reading!
I haven't tried this book yet, but I tried reading The Goldfinch and only lasted a few pages.. Not the right time for me, I guess.
I have to admit that I am conflicted on this one. I really enjoyed the opening third of the book and the central mystery as well as the gothic development of the college.
But I thought that the book really dragged after the climax of the novel (Bunnie’s murder) and fell into a lot of repetitiveness. There was some real pacing issues for me and I personally don’t think that each section of the Tragic form needed as much time as it got. I particularly found the start of the falling action a slog.
A couple of other thoughts. While this aims for Greek Tragedy it falls short for me. This may be a general observation about postmodernism but the flaws of the characters fail to reach a hamartia for me, and I didn’t get that sense of pity or fear from their demise. Whereas a Classical hero is trying to out run their fate but unable to do so due to their conflict with the Gods, there is nothing to create that in this text, and truthfully, all these characters had the choice to just pack up and start over again.
Secondly, I think a lot of the book’s appeal
Is in the aesthetics of the novel. While I think Tartt does a good job of criticising it by the end of the novel, it is ironic that it remains the main appeal for many people who still read it today. It reminds me of Brian De Palma’s ‘Scarface’ that offers a biting satirical look into ‘The American Dream’, but the film is loved by generations of men who admire Tony Montana’s bravado, chauvinism and **** you attitude. Thus, in many ways, the satirical elements of the book almost become the dominant discourse around it.
Thanks as always for your excellent reviews.
Read the Bacchae by Euripides ..... It is central to this.
I just didn't really "get" this book. I kinda liked the retro romantic style of writing, but beyond that it didn't really do anything for me. I thought all the characters were insufferable and pretentious AF, and if there was a message or point to the story I missed it completely. Although I did think that dream sequence at the end was kinda cool.
I know this is a year after you commented but I just wanted to say that the characters were supposed to be pretentious, the book is a scathing analysis of the extreme rich and their accompanying carelessness and selfishness that emerges from having so much privilege and staying in their own bubble, specifically through the lense of criticising elitism in academia. The book is showing how being super out of touch with reality drives these characters to do the unthinkable and how it ends up ruining their lives. Hope that helps explain the point of it lol :)
All the characters are insufferable bores; the thriller situations are anticlimatic and silly; the book takes an age to even get going on its main plot. BUT I still love this book! All the characters are so alive, well-drawn and vivid - and yet - Tartt manages to somehow keep a good deal of their lives secret, off the page, hidden and mysterious. The secret isn't just the central 'non-twist' of the plot - the secret history is that secret side to ourselves that we all carry around with us. You can never know or unlock or 'read' a person - any person - completely. It's impossible. Perhaps undesirable to do so. Human beings are a closed book. We all live and die alone in some very real and very sad sense. The central narrator is almost an unreliable storyteller in the fact that he knows so little about his friends - and he (and we) remain in the dark by the book's end.
It's a masterpiece, I believe. It's also the book I was reading when my father suddenly died last year. So I adore, and recommend it, even more.
This book was highly recommended by Between the covers so I was very disappointed when I read it. To me it was very repetitive with constant references to their debauched boring lifestyle which dragged on and on in the middle and didn’t seem to go anywhere. The constant references to Greek mythology was very self indulgent particularly if you’ve never had an understanding of Greek. Also I couldn’t find anything about the characters that I liked enough to care how their life turned out. The plot was good at the beginning but then it lacked pace to me and I struggled to get to the end. I would have liked to have learnt more about Julian’s influence over them and what really happened in these secret meetings that influenced them so much. To me it all lacked depth.
Are you planning to review Buddha of suburbia?
Not at the moment! Even though it was one of my favorite novels from last year, when I read it I didn't really have enough to say to film a review - and by now I'd need to re-read it to film one. Perhaps one day?
Hello. I loved the book as well. Donna Tartt is a Pulitzer Prize writer. I really LOVED the Goldfinch. Both The Secret History and The Goldfinch are so well written, both are stories about people and their interactions. If I might say, A Pulitzer Prize book, has to have (The Holy Shit Moment) and Donna Tartt does Holy Shit Moments very well. The other great book with a (HSM) is The Sympathizer. The Secret History was a good book, The Goldfinch is even Better !!
The first half of this book is so good and then it becomes a huge slog
I couldn't finish this. In fact, I abandoned it midway. I couldn't care at all about any of the characters and, above all, I found the style really poor and juvenile. Not for me!
I cant for the love of me get all the fuss abt this book. The writing is so lazy, I couldn't stand the poor quality and stupidity of the dialogue that reeked the "I am an old woman who try hard to capture how the hip teengers talk and act". And the whole thing is so stupid, vapid and superficial
I mean you can not like it and everything but she finished the book when she was 28 after working on it for 9 years, which hardly reeks of old age or laziness. The college is based closely on her own alma mater (bennington) and she studied classics. The students (in their twenties) are also distinctly unhip (hip people do not say "old horse"), the hip ones being portrayed in "Rules of Attraction".
I'm not trying to be mean or anything but your criticism seems so far off to me it's as though you read a different book.
she spent like ten years writing it, which exemplifies how exact every sentence is… i don’t wanna spoil it but there’s a secret history IN The Secret History. maybe give it another read to see if you can catch it :)
cool no one asked lol
GUYS WHATS YOUR FAV LINE FROM THE BOOK? MINE IS WHEN DONNA TARTT STRAIGHT UP DROPS THE HARD R. WHEN SHE WROTE "SAND NIGGERS" I INSTANTLY KNEW THIS WOMAN IS A LITERARY GENIUS. ISNT IT SO COOL HOW SHE SAYS SLURS IN HER ENTIRE COLLECTION OF WORKS?