Sarah O'Connor

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation,” (Tartt 3).

Richard Papen reflects back on his time as a student at Hampden, an elite college in Vermont where he studied in an elite class of six students with a charismatic classics professor. Richard is enchanted by his wealthy classmates, willing to do anything to become their friend and fit into their world, even if it means doing the unquestionable.

I knew very little about The Secret History except that it is very well-loved by its reader’s and is the apparent blueprint for all things dark academia. I will say that the summary of this book isn’t very accurate and relying on it will probably make some readers disappointed and that it’s best to go into this book blind knowing as little as possible. I hadn’t read the summary until I finished the book and going in knowing that it was dark academic definitely made me appreciate the book more, but it does make reviewing it difficult. So minor spoilers ahead.

The book follows Richard, our narrator, looking back at his time in college when he and his friends murdered their classmate, Bunny and is set up in two parts, before and leading up to the murder and after it has taken place. Throughout the novel we see Richard befriend these elite group of students and lie by omission about his own past so that he can gain acceptance from the group and join their world. I think Tartt does a brilliant job of fleshing out these characters and making them both relatable and appealable. While Richard, as narrator, is more observer and teller of the story, it’s easy to relate to his want and need to be accepted when his own home life in California is depressing and abusive. I also liked how the other characters were fleshed out as it’s easy to see why they’re so intriguing to Richard and how readers themselves become obsessed with these characters. Julian, their professor, encourages them to isolate from other students Henry is a brilliant and charismatic polyglot, the orphaned fraternal twins Charles and Camilla are friendly and open to Richard, Francis is wealthy and generous, and Bunny who ends up the victim is probably the hardest to love with his loud, brash, bigoted beliefs but even then is somehow charming. I do think that it’s amazing how much the characters in this book have been romanticized by its readers, which I suppose just shows Tartt’s talent as a writer. We become just as intrigued by this group of characters as Richard was and want to be pulled into their orbit and accepted by them no matter the cost.

Tartt is an amazing writer. This book is nearly six-hundred pages but she keeps the intrigue going, the more I learned about these characters the more I wanted to understand what they did. There are more revelations, some shocking and some less so, all very Greek which is appropriate. Tartt does an excellent job of writing about romanticizing versus reality, consequences to actions, and living with the decisions one has made.

The Secret History offers a fascinating look at how one decision can irrevocably change, and destroy, a person. It’s a book that lingers and one I can’t wait to read again!

Publication: September 16 1992
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 559 pages (Paperback)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Literary, Mystery
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.