The Secret History
Ratings857
Average rating4.1
This book is wonderfully written, in many instances I was shocked by the level of detail and carefully crafted sentences. The story unravels in such a way that I had no choice but to echo the sentiments of the main character throughout, despite in hindsight realising just how depraved and fake each one of the characters were. Although the plot is important too, I believe this book really stands out as a close study of different character types, what their motives might be, and how they interact.
It's so fucking boring. Maybe if I had a strong classics education, I'd see something that's invisible to me now, but all I see are a band of dull, beige personalities who manage to do almost nothing while droning incessantly about the nothing they're doing. Maybe it's a novel for intellectuals and I don't have the bona fides to get it.
DNF pg 79. I don't get it - this got such high ratings from basically everyone I know, and I just wanted to roll my eyes at all of these characters. They're rich pretentious douchebags or they're pretending to be rich pretentious douchbags, and if I didn't already know from the prologue that Bunny gets pushed into a ravine I'd be tempted to push him into one myself. Plus, other than Bunny I can't seem to differentiate the other three male characters in my head, so they're all basically Henry-Charles-ThatOtherOne.
Disappointing.
TW: homophobia, heavy drinking
Donna Tartt's bestselling debut novel is not generally considered a supernatural book. Most people probably remember it as a sort of elite college murder mystery, as a tight group of brainiac students studying ancient Greek degenerate into murderous monsters. At the core of the story, however, is a ritual that invokes atavistic horrors and blood-soaked Dionysian revelry. Tartt tells, and doesn't show, this chilling episode, which paradoxically heightens its creepy intensity.
beautifully written but the pretentiousness and subtle classism was a little too much for me
Students, Henry, Francis, Bunny, Richard, and the aptly named Charles & Camilla. Six of the most unlikable, snobbish, entitled bunch of ****S ever to grace the page. An accidental murder during a trance fuelled rampage sends the group into a downward spiral of lies and paranoia, and when one of the group threatens to go rogue, there is only one course of action the rest of the group can take to keep their secret safe.
So, this was very good. It did drag on in a couple of places (the funeral part was especially squidgy), and I wasn’t sure I needed to know how some of the minor characters’ lives turned out when I got the epilogue at the end. The 2nd part is finitely more readable than the first and I did take a perverse pleasure seeing the lives of these entitled *******S fall apart. This probably means I am also a ***t.
My niece thinks that this is the greatest book ever written. I think it’s just about as good as The Little Friend and I gave that 4 stars so 4 it is.
So this was definitely a vibe....unfortunately it was not my vibe.
I can sort of understand why so many people love this, but it's really not my kind of thing. It's long, slow, pretentious and honestly a bit boring, which is the worst thing a book can be.
The first half wasn't that bad, I was intrigued enough in these fairly unlikeable characters, their mysterious classics class and how they would eventually come to kill one of their friends.
Then said big event happened and after that I just did not care one bit. It was repetitive and meandering, there was a lot of telling and not showing. It was tedious.
I'm glad I tried it as it's so beloved but it wasn't one for me.
Really interesting book and love the mystery elements. My only gripe is the book feels longer than it should be, a simple short plot expanded on a mountain of events and details. Unfortunately reading this felt like a chore at times, but worth the read.
nice ol fuckery of terrible things.
personally always find it challenging when characters are morally grey, but this was done pretty well. pretty conflicted about how i felt about this book but i think the consistency of the suspense and the novel's ending gives it a solid 4.
imo, some of the sections dragged and could probs have been shorter, like the police case n the funeral. lowkey reminds me of murakami's writing cos it just DRAAAAGs on like bro i don't care that ur walking and counting the pavements on the footpath on the way to the coffee shop and the birds gather and oh now having a cigarette outside the coffee shop that is closed and i remember that my first girlfriend took me here haha nostalgia. but also i guess that's the whole point.
unique (?) coming of age story mixed with themes often found in green mythology (obviously as intended). if u know u know.
Everything about The Secret History is nuanced, but nothing more nuanced than the way this book made me feel. The first 200 pages are overwhelmingly boring that I almost dnf'd, the rest is certainly compelling, though often uncomfortable. Everybody is so unlikable, but nobody more than Richard: a walking embodiment of sexism and internalized homophobia, choosing his own isolation and knowingly deciding that the only who he would dare relate to are the most pretentious people he could find.
I understand a lot of this was the point and acknowledge that The Secret History is a blueprint for many novels, but I find some dark academia has explored the same themes in a way that I personally found more nuanced and interesting.
I was worried I wouldn’t end up loving this when I started it but I absolutely did. It’s exciting and vaguely sickening throughout. I love Richard as the narrator because of the ways he sees the other characters.
It was a bit confusing to find this novel less of an academia thriller or dark occult/secret-society driven narrative, and much more of a slown-burn character study both leading up to a (somewhat) tragic event, and the aftermath of it. The prose is heavy, but the readibility and pace suffer more from uneccessary context or detail and the university ‘hook' quickly becomes barely a backdrop for the story. There are a few surprises in the back half of the book, with some more earned and plausible than others, but it also feels like the author never fully strikes the right balance of tone throughout.
2 stars because the writing is good, but lords wth was this. I love smart books, I love satire, I love this kind of setup and plot, but this was insufferable. Others have put it more eloquently than me, but yeah. Abhorrent.
I ran out of time and stopped reading about 40% of the way thru, I would pick up again but have other stuff I wanna read first
Contains spoilers
"Are you happy here?" I said at last. He considered this for a moment. "Not particularly," he said. "But you're not very happy where you are, either."
what I love most about this book is that although there's a definite plot line and series of important events, the most compelling part of the book is the characters and how they all intertwine. it's incredibly easy for an author to make you support a cast of characters, but donna tartt writes each character so well and so in-depth that you leave the story wondering if they were ever genuine at any point. although I wasn't the biggest fan of the ending (or the time jump—when will they learn? 😔) my disappointment was greatly made up for in beautiful writing and rich character exploration. francis abernathy served cunt in every single scene he was in.
This was an amazing book that was beautifully written and explored the darker elements of academia and intellectuals as their humanity and morality crumbles.
We see how these pursuit of enlightenment and transcendence becomes deadly and the far reaching consequences that lead to the unraveling of a close knit group of Classics students.
This book also explores how the longing to belong and become members of particular groups or cliques forming unhealthy attachments and how far you'll go to stay apart of such groups. What secrets will you keep, what things will you do? How far is too far concerning things such as morality and ethics?
This was top tier storytelling and masterful writing with gorgeously complex characterization and slow burn suspense. A true modern classic and the originator of the dark academia genre. Superb!
reading some of the reviews makes me wonder if we read the same book. I shake my head at people saying “some scenes made no sense! Like, why the incest?!” Well, see, because they're insane, and they're all mentally unravelling, and to show how deep the fucked-up-ness runs in this friend group and also how fucked up they are after traumabonding like insane. Like, did you miss Camilla going on dates over the course of the book? Charles beating somebody up for her? Charles beating HER?
