A month or two before, I would have been appalled at the idea of any murder at all. But that Sunday afternoon, as I actually stood watching one, it seemed the easiest thing in the world. ― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
“Time, and repeated screenings, have endowed the memory with a menace the original did not possess. -Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Based on my experience reading The Goldfinch, I knew that my next Donna Tartt book would be a serious undertaking. After being warned off from reading The Little Friend, I picked her other most popular novel, The Secret History.
The Secret History is about five undergraduates enrolled in a highly-exclusive classics program at a fictional liberal arts college in rural Vermont. Richard Papen, a displaced Californian seeking a new life as far away from home and his family as possible, gets sucked into the world of a pretentious, entitled, but oddly driven group of east coast trust fund kids whiling away their fortunes and focus under the instruction of an entrancing but scrupulous classical Greek professor. They orbit around each other, perpetually in one another’s company during weekend trips to the country estate of one of the member’s elder relatives. As in stories of this nature, things are wild and fun until suddenly they are not. This story, at its heart, is about the lies we tell others in order to remain safe, the lies we tell ourselves for the same purpose, and how the truth eventually bleeds through the hastily papered-over construction we’ve built around ourselves.
As odd as it may sound, I feel the same way reading Donna Tartt as I do when reading Haruki Murakami. The story wanders. It is SO slow. It has so much detail that rarely pays off, and yet I savor the time I spend in their world. Also, like Murakami, I mentally open a bottle of champagne for finally making it to the end, for a job well done.
The good: The detail Tartt dedicated to the loveliness and harshness of the college and the surrounding area. I can envision it all perfectly in my mind. The characters, as always, are beautifully rendered. I loved and hated all of them (except for maybe Judy Poovey, who was a breath of fresh air among all of these chain-smoking, preppy, literature snobs). The main character is such an idiot at times, it makes it hard to root for him. But in the end, you do want him to make it out.
The bad: This book is too much. Too much conversation about Classics. Too much pretension. This is the same complaint I had about The Goldfinch. I adored that book, but it dragged on far longer than was necessary.