The Secret History

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.

This is the first book where we had more than one DNF. The lengthy chapters proved an obstacle for those that can only read in short bursts, and wanted clearer stopping places. The subject matter was also pretty dark, and perhaps with the shortening days and the growing darkness, it was too much. We did have some fans. The plot has plenty of surprises despite, or maybe including, starting with a murder.

Chekhov's gun: If a gun features in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as being fired at some later point.

I found this book confusing and very hard to follow. I only finished it because of my book club, otherwise I would have put it down after the first few chapters. It was pure torture to finish and a huge relief when it was over.

THE quintessential dark academia novel that is also a satirical take on the genre. Witty and heart racing, had me on the edge of my seat. The story follows Richard Papen, a classics student at an artsy Vermont college who gets taken in by a closed off group of other classics students and an eclectic professor. In the style of the Iliad, it starts at the height of the conflict: they’ve just murdered one of their classmates. The rest of the story unravels what led them to this point and how hubris and the “longing for the picturesque” played a part in Richard’s involvement.