The Secret History by Donna Tartt Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Secret History
Book Review: Catcher in the Rye meets The Historian
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my 10 favorite books of all time. I was entranced. I wanted to go out and learn everything I could about the ancient Greeks. I love academic fiction, but this was in a league of its own. Breathtaking. If you like this read The Historian by Kostova and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.Book Review: Caution: windbag at work
Summary: 1 Stars
Nil desperandum est. This book is to mystery novels what Alma is to Gustav...better Xenophon to Themistocles. The very cornucopia fed to Incitatus; cui bonii optimii. Tartt is not one to wear her erudition lightly. Sophomoric quotes from Goddard to Suetonius to Chesterton leap from the pages to illuminate the most banal of thoughts. This is a book where you are in suspense until page 1. The following 600 serve to add luster to the one-dimensional characters until they arise, chrysalis like, into fully-fledged two dimensions. Some hostile reviewers believe that Tartt merely loaded the Oxford Dictionary of quotations into a blunderbuss and picked up the pieces in random, eulogizing one per half page. But that would be scurrilous and beyond the enmity of Agrippina equal, forse qui, to the misogyny of Polonius.
If you like this review, you will love this novel. Otherwise, stay clear.
Book Review: Certainly worth reading
Summary: 4 Stars
While reading it, I had the sneaking suspicion that the final version of the book was either pared down from a much lengthier, unedited manuscript, or, perhaps, was written in fits and starts. The book's style very obviously changed as I progressed through it. But, the fact that I read it through almost in one sitting is proof that it held my attention. (Although, after a brilliant start, it did seriously bog down for a while after the first few chapters.) Part of the reason I was so interested in the story concerned my expectation that I would learn more detail about what actually happened on the night of the first murder. (Alas, I did not.) However, other developments within the plot were unexpected and even quite morbidly funny (but, then again, the heartlessness and perversion of the main and peripheral characters were both a bit over-the-top). The ending, for me, was completely unexpected and low key, but fit nicely into the book's overall theme. Well done, Donna: You made me both like and despise the characters, and all at the same time.Book Review: College Revisited
Summary: 4 Stars
Like The Magus by John Fowles, this book shows the bloat of an over-long gestation. However, Donna Tartt's tale of guilt without redemption is so beguiling that it is easy to forgive her many digressions.Book Review: Critical and entertaining at once
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is not a masterpiece. Yet, it managed through both style and content to keep me turning the pages and reading for three consecutive days. At the end I felt that the author succeeded in striking a very good balance between entertainment and social criticism. So while the process of reading was always driven by the mysteries of murder, friendship and betrayal; it's the author's critical insight on social and academic elitism and the flawed nature of role models which ultimately remains as an aftertaste of the novel. It's a fairly socially aware thriller and for that I am giving it 4 stars.