The Secret History

[ceelo]

By Donna Tartt,

has anybody read this? I purchased it just the other week sort of on a whim, and have just started it. Thoughts on it much appreciated

[k.brignell]

It is my favorite book! I adore her prose, though some critics accuse her of being pretentious. She is an expert at creating tension and she seems to of been greatly influenced by Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. A modern twist on the classic greek tragedy set on a New England campus told by a romantic naive intellectual and a cast of interesting characters, you can't go wrong.

[ceelo]

Not sure if i'm liking it that much to be honest

[_Shannon_]

Ooohhh! I loved it! But I also went to a Great Books College and have some serious Ancient nerditude in me.

[Patrick_Bateman]

have some serious Ancient nerditude in me.

Is he in you now?

[_Shannon_]

Is he in you now?

[AuntShecky]

I read this when someone let me borrow a hardcover copy when it first came out about 15 years ago. (And yes, I did return the book to the original owner when I finished it.)

The gal who bought the book raved about how good a writer Donna Tartt was in that she could depict both male and female characters. (Uh, I thought, isn't that what all good writers are supposed to do? Jane Austen, George Eliot, et al. could create credible male characters and most of the "dead white male" authors --Shakespeare, Dickens, O'Neill, et al. had the ability to bring female characters to life.)

Anyway, if I remember correctly, the story concerned a tight band of college students, intelligent, arty, bound to enter the world outside academia as part of the "elite." They become obsessed with ancient Greek rituals, and in a kind of experiment get carried away and find themselves enmeshed in a crime.

The book was lengthy, literary, well-written, but as you can see in the preceding paragraph, not especially memorable. I do however, recall, that the publisher endowed Ms. Tartt with a record-breaking monetary advance, perhaps with an eye toward her producing more novels. I can't say I've followed her subsequent career very closely, but I do believe she did have a second work published, a children's book methinks.

[k.brignell]

I think that there was some sort of bidding war between to publishers to aquire the book hence the large advance. The novel is based on something that happened to her when she was at university. (That something is very ambiguous and vague, but it inspired the book nonetheless)
The second book she wrote was 'The Little Friend' it was about a child but written for adults.
I found the book, well the characters very memorable. I guess the elite snobbery of the outcasts appeals to me!
The next sentence isn't a spoiler as it happens in the prologue.... I love that the book begins with the murder of Bunny and then traces how the students got to the point of actual premeditated murder of one of their friends and the aftermath on Richard Papen's naive outlook.

"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."

[ceelo]

I actually quite like it now..

[qimissung]

I loved it. I read it in great gulps, and then had to wait ten years for her next one. I'm currently lethargically reading "The Little Friend." I like it, but it's harder for me to be enthused about it. Kind of Southern Gothic. The main character, a young girl, is very intriguing, but the adults (as usual) leave her emotionally bereft. Tartt is spot on at creating characters, their life and history, and she had a kind, deft hand when she writes about their pain, like a very skilled surgeon AND his rather chilly nurse.

God I love her writing.

[k.brignell]

Qimissung, I agree with you entirely in regards to Tartt's writing, she is very underrated me thinks, but I guess writing only one book a decade doen't help all to much...

[ceelo]

I finished it and I am completely in love with it.

[k.brignell]

Very glad to hear Ceelo, who was your favorite character? At first I was quite smitten with Bunny but then he got annoying...

[Kafka's Crow]

I am more than half way through. I like it but it strongly appeals to the ancient Greek inside every student of literature so a kind of typical campus crime thriller than an intellectually stimulating read. I can predict more bad things would be done by people like whom we all once yearned to become.

[thediamondsky]

I love Francis.