Although I’m sharing this review in the “Books I’ve Loved” section of my blog, I won’t claim that I loved The Secret History. There are things I loved about it and many things I did not, but I do feel it was thought-provoking and worth the read.
In The Secret History by Donna Tartt, the narrator, Richard Pappin, transfers to Hampden College in Vermont and falls in love with a cultlike group of students handpicked by their enigmatic professor, Julian, to study Greek classicism. We watch as Richard struggles to fit in and learn the dynamics of this group, and eventually becomes a party to their darkest secret.
“It’s funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very much different from what I actually did.”
This novel has a spectacular first line:
“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 tells us the secret on the very first page. We simply must read on to discover how events led to this murder. It is a murder mystery beneath it all, although we know both the victim and the perpetrators from the very first page. The story is driven by character rather than plot, with a fascinating examination of human morality, the descent into madness, and the underlying motive of each of the characters. That being said, the plot itself surprised me several times, so don’t underestimate the storyline of this novel.
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things – naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror – are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself – quite to one’s surprise – in an entirely different world.”
The book explores the concept that terrible things can hold a kind of dark beauty and that beauty often instills fear. I found the idea intriguing that these so-called important and serious philosophical studies and ponderings can actually send a person further from reality, rationality, and even morality.
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
It is sometimes a slog to read, and there’s no denying it’s a long book. I would even go so far as to say that it’s far longer than it needs to be. But there are moments of beauty that make it worth the read. All of the characters are thoroughly unlikeable in their own way but with glimpses of relatable qualities.
“Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so? Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls – which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”
The Secret History is self-indulgent and melodramatic, but isn’t that fitting for a novel about college-age classical philosophy students? It’s well worth the read if you have the time and energy and if, like me, you enjoy beautiful words and don’t mind sifting through too many of them to find the point.
“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.”
Aly Writes 