The Secret History (Vintage Contemporaries)

Oh my gosh! This book! It's my first Donna Tartt and I loved it! It was a readalong with @readingenvy and I'm so glad I read it. If you liked The Likeness by Tana French, or any Tana French for that matter, you'll like this book. It's quite lengthy, but it pulls you in and has a twisty end.

This book is an experience on several levels, some of which occur outside of the book but undoubtedly affect one's reading. For instance, to me, part of the experience involves pausing to consider and awe at the fact that a twentysomething wrote words others might not even approach in a full lifetime. More than that, though, the uniqueness of reading The Secret History is both its content and delivery (duh). Who else would think to write such a modern book peppered with ancient references and archaic verbiage, let alone succeed at such an endeavor? One of Tartt's key skills, in this work and to a lesser extent the work that follows, is found in the reader's relation to her work, not exactly suspending disbelief but in that ballpark. There's a certain ease and naturalness with which you eventually accept the entirely pretentious and stilted way these characters talk and the erratic oscillations the writer and plot and characters take, swinging between topics or actions or moods of maximal intensity and passion on one end and maximal casualness and callousness on the other. The book is funny, the plot is electric, the tone is somewhat austere and sharp, the range of vocabulary used is unparalleled. What I find as equally impressive as any other praises one could heap onto this book and how impressive it is for a writer under thirty to have penned its pages, is the voice. Though obviously this book was written over a decade, the reader experiences it all at once, and thus can't help but notice and marvel at the clarity of style and the writer's grasp of what their style is and how they relate to it and how they can play to their talents. Simple things like liberally using em dashes or use of obscure words or allusions to esoteric items of a classics education, Tartt knows how to use her tools to their fullest extent. Most of all, as noted, the plot moves, the story itself is fascinating, and the first page, with its brilliant flipping of the murder-mystery genre, hooks you immediately. A must read, though perhaps one you may never read again. I say the latter because there are probably ways to read this book less charitably, which I think probably comes from second and third readings. I can see how someone might tire of the writing style or find it a little too consciously hewn or that Tartt sometimes seems more interested or equally interested in impressing the reader or justifying her place in the writing world or her status as a writer than she is interested in writing a good book, or that this book too desperately wants to be literary or a great work of literature or one deserving of more than just popular/commercial success and general acclaim. Reminds me of something an English professor once told me which was that my essay sounded too much like a writer who knew he was writing an essay, that he read it and thought I must've been thinking while writing "AH! I am writing an English essay! I must show you that I am writing an English essay!" But again, I don't read it that way and refuse to change my opinion or taint its positive tilt through further rereading.

Donna Tartt’s debut novel is an exquisite piece of literature. It is atmospheric, mysterious, and intellectually challenging. I now understand why this book has a massive cult following. It’s Dead Poets Society (1989) meets Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022). My only regret is that I did not read this book sooner.

The novel is not without its critics. As much as I truly loved this book, I respectfully understand those who could not get into it. It was significantly long. It was very slow-paced. There were no heroes. Only villains. There wasn’t a happy ending. Not even a bittersweet ending. Overall, the novel was very unique. That’s what I personally loved about it. It had the willingness to take a risk and go against the mainstream.

I know the book gets the common criticism for all the characters being unlikable. While none of the characters were likable, they were still interesting and complex. My personal favorites were Henry Winter and Judy Poovey. I always appreciate literary works that are honest about human frailty. It’s great character study.

Another common criticism is the constant use of bigoted and offensive language. It is very important to understand that the depiction of an action in a book is not an endorsement of it. Novels depicting the horrors of war are not an endorsement of war. Novels depicting the horrors of slavery are not an endorsement of slavery. The politically incorrect vocabulary from the characters in The Secret History very likely matched how upper-class white university students really spoke in the 1980s. It doesn’t make it right, it just makes it authentic. The same principle goes for the repetitive references to sex, drinking, and drug use. If you really don’t believe that college students would drink excessively, experiment sexually, and use heavy substances, I got a bridge I want to sell you.

To properly understand the novel, you have to understand Donna Tartt. She wrote this book as a student at Bennington College during the 1980s. She studied classics. One of her classmates was Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote the book American Psycho (1991), a satire of 1980s yuppie culture. Her favorite writers are Shirley Jackson and Charles Dickens, both of whom utilized satire for social commentary. The Secret History is clearly a satire of college elitism.

The most unfortunate thing about this novel is that it will never be adapted into a movie. It’s been tried many times, but it never happened. What if a filmmaker like Luca Guadagnino adapted this? Or Todd Haynes? Or Ryan Murphy? Maybe it is for the best that this novel never got adapted. Book-to-movie adaptations are very rarely faithful to the original source material. Just look at The Great Gatsby (2013).

The Secret History is my new favorite book. I highly recommend it! It is definitely worth all of the hype.

4.5

This book for me was a rambling parade of words that had momentary connections. Had it not been for my obligation to my book club, I most certainly would not have finished the book. Ms Tartt apparently liked to put as many words on a page as possible, many of which just came across as page filler. Characters, with the exception of Bunny, were shells. I have no idea what they looked like, or what their role in the book was. Richard, the main protagonist, was a minor character when compared to Henry.