A review by emmacartlidge
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw’, that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside of literature?”

After reading The Secret History, I feel somehow out of place and discontent with the instability of it all. It feels as though after closing the book, the entire world crumbled beneath my feet. Perceptions of people, ideas about classicism and theories about death have all been tainted by the morally grey characters that make up The Secret History. 

Richard Papen is a 28-year-old Californian who comes from a rough, “expendable past” who tells the story of his 19-year-old self when he first secretly enrolled in Hampden College; a private elitist university in New England, Vermont. There, he meets a group of 5 intellects studying an Ancient Greek major under the influence of their eccentric professor, Julian Morrow. 
Henry Winter, Francis Abernathy, Bunny Corcoran, Charles Macaulay and Camilla Macaulay unravel a small galaxy of thoughts, linguistics and secrets.

The Secret History tells the tale, from the perspective of an outsider, of the murder of their friend, Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran. It is a dedication to the “fatal flaw” and Richard’s “morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs”.

“‘But how,’ said Charles, who was close to tears, ‘how can you possible justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. ‘I prefer to think of it’, he had said, ‘as a redistribution of matter.’”

Together, the students discover a way of living without thinking. They leave the phenomenal world behind and enter a world of literary and linguistic riches. 

One of my favourite excerpts:
“Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?…If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look at that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn. … Hard for us to imagine. That fire of pure being.”

The Secret History has given me a euphoric kind of mental and emotional whiplash which demonstrates the dangers of pack mentality. It explores the terror found in genuine beauty and the imperfectness of character. It is hypnotic, enthralling, tragic but beautiful. 

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”

There is no answer to this book. No one except Donna Tartt can ever do it justice. You become the characters through her writing, live and breathe their very actions. You slip away so easily into this world she has crafted. I have never read a book like this before, and I don’t I think Ill ever read anything quite like it again.

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
Expand filter menu Content Warnings