The Secret History by Donna Tartt Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Secret History
Book Review: Fascinanting first novel
Summary: 5 Stars
Donna Tartt's outstanding first novel, written while she was a student at Bennington, is a terrific mystery and, I think, an insidious look at the pathologies of the modern university. Richard Papen is a lower middle class Californian who has wended his way to Hampden College in Vermont, largely because he like the picture on the catalogue. Richard happens to be proficient in several languages, so he tries getting into one of Professor Julian Morrow's classical language classes. But he discovers that Morrow only teaches a select handful of students and teaches every class that they take. They form an elite clique within the elite campus. Eventually, Richard attaches himself to this group and is admitted to Morrow's disciple hood.
Morrow remains a sort of opaque presence, but Richard's life is soon entwined with the other students, lead by the wealthy & arrogant Henry Winter and including Charles and Camilla MacCaulay, the overly close twins, Francis Abernathy, a flamboyant homosexual, and Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran, a rumpled preppy of dubious social grace. Richard longs to fit into this group and, ashamed of his rather plebeian origins, is soon inventing a fake background for himself and taking on pseudo sophisticated airs.
However, there's more to this little clan than meets the eye, and as the story unfolds, he discovers that during an attempt to recreate a Dionysian frenzy, Henry, Francis and the twins have killed a local man. Now Bunny has found them out & is basically blackmailing them, exacting a cruel revenge for their many slights. Inevitably, they decide that Bunny must die and the rest of the book deals with the murder's aftermath.
When this book was first published it was attended by tremendous hype, both because of the youth of the author and because of her mentors, Willie Morris & Brett Easton Ellis among them. But the hype, and the comparisons to Crime and Punishment, could not obscure the fact that Ms Tartt had penned an absorbing gothic mystery which quickly became a bestseller.
I agree with many of the criticisms of the novel. Some of the characters are underwritten and we are not adequately exposed to the teaching of Julian Morrow that makes him so attractive to the students. However, these legitimate gripes are outweighed by the creepy mesmeric can't-put-it-down story that the author weaves.
In addition, I think there's another reading that you can apply to the book with some profit. The effete, elitist, amoral, hothouse atmosphere fostered by Morrow and embraced by the clique is an apt metaphor for the modern university. Here are students who are absorbed by their studies, or at least by the aura of their studies, 24 hours a day, who cede complete control of their own minds to their instructor. Not content with the elitism of a University so expensive that there are few middle class students anyway, they've further segregated themselves into a small band of like minded students. If they get in trouble, it's in the pursuit of some romantic intellectual ideal and after all, who do they kill, just a townie and a slacker student.
However you interpret the story, it's a rewarding reading experience.
Book Review: First book I never finished
Summary: 2 Stars
This book was the first that once I started it I failed to finish reading it. The plot intrigued me at first. What could have been a good book made up of interesting characters and unpredictable plot twists, became a chore to read because the author was too verbose. At first her description of everything made for an interesting and highly developed story. However, when she continually described the most mundane acts in no less than ten lines a piece I was no longer interested. I found myself trying to skip the verbiage and find the meat of the book. In the end I put the book down and never returned.Book Review: Good, weird, but a stretch of the imagination
Summary: 4 Stars
I thought this novel was a good psychological thriller. It shows your conscience will get you in the end, but not in a preachy way.
My major complaint is that the stuck-up language and clothing of the characters is just not realistic. Even though they're snobby classics majors, they're still college kids (undergrads, no less) in their early 20s. Here are some grating examples of their unrealistic speech: They say "Goodness" (as in 'goodness gracious') when normal young people would say "God"; they call guys "fellows" instead of "guys"; they say "certainly" instead of "yes"--or, what would be more the norm in dialog, "yeah"; the male characters say "lovely," and they're not even from England. And what college student wears suits on a daily basis?
My brother was a classics major and later studied comparative literature at Harvard, and he and his classmates wore jeans and T shirts and talked normally.
And I can't believe the characters wouldn't be more freaked out by the incest between a brother and sister, Camilla and Charles, in the book. In that same vein, I don't understand why the characters give Camilla such a hard time for moving away from Charles. That's about the only emotionally healthy and sane move any of them makes in the book (maybe that's why they give her a hard time--craziness loves company).
Also, it seems unlikely that the characters would be able to inflict such horrendous injuries to the farmer they accidentally kill with their bare hands. I also would think they would be far more traumatized by this first killing than they were, accidental or not. the whole bacchanalia/first killing is definitely hard to believe. And we never do hear about the "carnal proceedings" that took place in the bacchanalia--which the author teases us with early on.
But still, an interesting and well-written psychological thriller. I like the academic and classics backdrop and "secret society" feel of the book.
Book Review: Gripping, Intriguing, Beautiful.
Summary: 5 Stars
I ate this book up with a spoon. It took some time to get used to but once I started to keep track of the characters(didn't take long) I could not put this book down. It was methodically written yet lyrical. Because the reader knows the victim and the attacker from the beginning I would not call it a mystery, but it's definitely a thriller.Book Review: Hated to see this one end
Summary: 5 Stars
I could not put this book down. The characters are well-drawn, the writing is great, the plot moves at a fast clip - I just loved it. The narrator has a compelling voice that stayed with me for a long time afterward.