REVIEW: The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.” - Donna Tartt

Upon transferring to Hampden college, Richard, our protagonist, decides to also switch majors to Classical Philology because he finds the other students with this major intriguing. After being allowed into this little not-exactly-secret-but-exclusive society, his life takes a turn, that eventually leads to murder.

I absolutely adored the build-up to the murder. Not only is the writing and the whole mood of the book, giving me the chills several times, stunning, but the line of thought that leads to the murder is also extremely logical to me. I often criticise “problems” in books that could be solved in a heartbeat if only characters communicated with one another. This was something I would criticise in If We Were Villains, for example (which I adored otherwise and you can’t write about A Secret History without comparing the two, I guess). But in this, I caught myself thinking more than once: Oh my, they really don’t have many choices here, do they? I found it refreshing to finally have a murder I’m on board with - Without completely villainising the victim as well.

Bunny. What can I say, I think, he’s one of the best characters ever written. I found it incredibly refreshing to read about a racist, misogynistic, audacious arsehole (and yes, I’m aware of my incredible privilege as a white woman to be able to find racism “refreshing” and not traumatising), without his characterisation becoming flat in exchange.

I was able to genuinely dislike Bunny, whilst also being given the chance to understand the roots of his flaws (given his family history) and feeling sorry for this (literally and figuratively) poor, never-as-smart-as-his-peers, consumed by guilt… Boy. Because that’s what he was in the end. A boy with disgusting flaws but no one that particularly deserved to die as compared to someone who had to die, if the rest of them wanted to not end up in prison. Bravo to Donna Tartt for writing Edmund Corcoran. He’s nothing short of real to me.

In general, I liked how many decisions of the characters were logical ones. The book is often praised as “a study of youthful arrogance” and while I agree (I mean come on, yes, one of them is gay, one poor-ish and one female, but apart from that, they’re almost all incredibly privileged white kids with not a worry in their lives), I also found their lines of thoughts relatable. I’m especially impressed with Tartt’s ability to make my thoughts about Henry slowly transition from admiration for him, to fear. I liked Henry’s cold, logical demeanour in the first part, then I found myself getting more and more worried about Charles, the more he started to fuck up because I kept thinking: “If his anxiety grows too dangerous, Henry’s gonna want to kill him as well; he’s done it before.”

To me, this was a chilling development, and I applaud the author for planting this exact shift in emotions her characters felt in the readers.

While I genuinely enjoyed The Secret History, I cannot justify giving it five stars. I don’t think it’s overhyped, exactly, and I completely disagree with people hating on it, but there were some things I just thought weren’t done well:

While the build-up of the first “act” was nothing short of brilliant, the second part of the book was much weaker for me. We get 250 pages of tension, then 300 pages of nothing but people having anxiety attacks and in the last 100 pages a second climax that just felt forced, compared to the first one that was set up so well.

Connected to that: The characters. While it’s logical that we don’t get to see much except how “cool and fashionable” they are of Charles and Francis and Camilla in the first part, because that is how Richard sees them in the beginning, I feel like they were mainly included because Richard, Bunny and Henry needed pals. Then, in the second part, we get more of the other three actually doing something (suicide attempts, (tw)incest, finally some gay action, you name it!) but I just… Didn’t really care. I couldn’t help but feel like they only served as downwards-comparisons to build up Henry as this sociopathic genius kid (who’s better than everyone at everything).

What I liked were the two sentences about why they wouldn’t be successful academically out of Hampden, but apart from that, we get nothing, not even their motivations for studying Greek except for all of them very much idolising Julien, but oh well, that’s not enough to suddenly make me care about someone and just throwing three words in about someone (e.g. Francis: lazy, gay, hypochondriac) doesn’t make for a proper characterisation.

This brings my to my own personal ick in this book: Camilla. While Charles gets a reasonably well-founded mental breakdown storyline in the second part of the story, and Francis is at least serving some hook-ups, Camilla literally serves no purpose whatsoever except for being the love interest of… Everyone? Seriously, why is everyone simping over this woman who is nothing but (I dunno) beauftiful (in a slightly “unconventional” way because she “dresses like a boy, sometimes, I guess)? And then Henry “I don’t feel actual emotions” Winter, somehow ends up falling for her as well, even though she has no personality and isn’t even that good at Greek? Yeah, right.

And even after Henry’s death, she still can’t make decisions for herself because “Sorry, I still love him”. Fuck off. Weak. Weak-ass writing of a female character and especially disappointing because she was written by a woman. Frankly, the most interesting thing about Camilla, is, that she was fucking her brother from time to time. But of course, after falling in love with good ol’ Henry, THEN she realises that maybe (tw)incest isn’t the healthiest thing to do. THANK GOD FOR TALL, GOODLOOKING WHITE MEN KEEPING US SILLY GALS IN CHECK!

In general, I just got the feeling that Tartt had a favourite character to write about… And while I don’t mind, especially when he’s as hot as Henry, that doesn’t mean you can justify writing other characters flatly. I don’t need them to be the centre of attention - But for that, they need to be at least well-written; otherwise they’re gonna steal my attention for being flat, which is what happened here.

The last point I’d like to criticise is that I thought the book to be a bit “empty” of heart. The whole tragedy begins because five kids are so in love with the idea of extacy or leaving one’s body or mind or… Alcohol poisoning (or whatever!). The whole story begins because their lives are “Empty” - And though their endeavours seemingly give it more meaning at first, I felt nothing of that. Where was the academia? Yes, they studied Greek, yes, they got drunk and tried to re-enact some things and Julian, apparently, talks a lot about joy and philosophy and loyalty and pain… But where was that? They could’ve easily been business or chemistry students who saw a movie about a Greek ritual, and there you go.

I first heard about The Secret History because of some beautiful quotes. “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it” and all that… But I feel like the book focussed only on actions (murder etc.) and results (escape into alcoholism to numb the huilt) instead of actually diving into the questions of life and the characters’ psyches. Even Richard, whose head we’re living in, gives us nothing but “Yeah, I kinda love Camilla… And Henry’s impressive… And I like it when things are pretty, so I lie about being poor. Yeah. And I feel kinda guilty because we killed Bunny but not really.” The only character that isn’t empty, ironically, is Henry, because he recognises his own lack of ANYTHING in his life and does something about it. Sociopath or not, he had purpose through having none.

I felt like the book was a lot about pretty words, but nobody actually said them. The whole “corruption” of them, what drives them to attempt to fill the void, happens before Richard arrives, so we get none of that. We only get the aftermath and while I get that it’s supposed to be from Richard’s perspective, I feel robbed of actually interesting input through the book or, at least, to stick with the narrative of arrogant white kids, what they think to be interesting input through Julian or whomever. Give me the wickedness of sleeping with your twin brother! Give me the torture of hooking up with straight guy but never being the first choice! Give me the yearning for purpose in life! Gimme, gimme, gimme (a Henry Winter after midnight)! But Tartt didn’t.

This is everything I’ve got to say about this one. Well, maybe not everything, but everything I’d want to burden other people with.

I didn’t regret reading it. If anything, I was left wanting more of it, wanting to dive deeper, which is also a sign of quality, if you think about it. :)