The Secret History

It's really a 4.75. This book can truly, be described as "dark academia" and it definitely fucked with my head. It was a behemoth to get through, the only female character in the group was underdeveloped, but The Secret History eventually got me thinking. I wanted to dislike it because I dislike ambiguous endings but it has unfortunately wormed its way into my head (not my heart).

DNF. Found it a rambling self indulgent narrative. The premise is intriguing but it just took way too long to get where it needed to go.

I had high expectations toward this novel, and it was a good book. I think it's very delicately written, and I love the philosophical aura, and the classics behind the story. However, I felt it disappointed me a little bit. At first, I thought the teacher was going to naturally gain protagonism, but he didn't, instead, he disappeared gradually from the main story, although he was an interesting character. Then, the relationships between the main characters were diffuse and confusing... like if nobody really knew what they wanted, and so they were unable to fight and get it. Even Henry had this kind of erratic conduct. The first murder is unclear, weird and without a real motive. It was an interesting book and Donna Tartt's writing is AMAZING. However, I didn't deeply connect with the characters, who were drunk most of the time...

DNF 70%

I guess this is a love it or not kind of book. I really tried but in the end, I really didn't care how it ended because I didn't care about a single one of the characters.

This is one of the few books that impressed me more with its exquisite, layered, and deeply engaging writing than with its plot. The storyline itself is simple. From the start, our narrator, Richard, looks back on the events that led to the murder of his friend Bunny while he was studying for his literature degree. What follows is less a mystery and more an exploration of the “why” behind those events. Donna Tartt skillfully brings her characters to life, making them visceral, unsettling, sometimes funny, often unreliable, and somehow easy to empathize with, impossible to fully trust, and also loathsome. Her writing is masterful and rich with symbolism, which eventually leads us to perceive the story as a beautiful, philosophical Greek tragedy rather than merely the tale of a group of entitled, wealthy, elitist students capable of murder. The group’s moral ambiguity or their refusal to live outside their own elaborate, self-mythologizing, Greek-tragedy-tinged thinking becomes darkly humorous at times. This is definitely the kind of book I would read more than once to uncover more of its secrets, ideas, hidden tensions, and philosophies.