The Secret History

I have to start by saying that I loved The Secret History.  Donna Tartt is amazing, the book is just wonderful.  It’s the kind of book that I’m a little bit sorry I’ve read, because it means that I can’t read it for the first time ever again.  It is hands down the best book I’ve read since Blonde.  I had to hide it when I went to bed to stop myself from staying up all night reading it.  In short, I cannot sing its praises enough.  It was made even better by the fact that the blurb on the edition that I have is just awful; it made me expect a book of a lot of talking and little action.  But that’s not what Tartt delivers.  The Secret History is (to use a book review cliché) utterly gripping from the first page.

Tartt’s book tells the story of six friends: narrator Richard, Henry, Francis, twins Camilla and Charles, and Bunny, studying Greek at fictional Hampdon college in New England.  It kicks off with the group murdering Bunny, before skipping back several months to let us know how we got to this point.  Tartt uses Richard’s working class voice to give an idea of the excess and the privilege of the others; who are mostly incredibly rich.  Richard lies about his wealth to gain access to Greek classes, run by the much worshipped Julian Morrow, and in doing so steps into another, completely insular world.  The first half of the book concentrates on Richard cementing his position in the group, while Bunny’s becomes ever more precarious and the second half focuses on the fall out of the murder.  I don’t want to say any more than that.  If you want to know more, read the book.

I don’t want to give too much of the book away, so I’m finding it pretty hard to say why I like the book.  Tartt is a fantastic writer, to start with.  The relationships between the characters are utterly brilliant and even when they’re completely doing completely immoral things; it’s still easy to relate to them.  The book does, of course, raise questions of morality but this, somehow, doesn’t seem as important as the characters.  It’s as though we are dragged into the other world along with Richard.  The fact that most of the friendship group is so fantastical and excessive doesn’t really matter, either, because we see them through Richard’s eyes.  Richard is the closest thing to normal in the book; he also doesn’t have a particularly strong personality, so it’s easy to project yourself on to him. 

I’m going to leave it there.  There are more than a hundred things that I could say about the book.  Part of me worries that the reason that I loved this book so much was just that it’s about a university experience that’s so rich  and leaving home for the first time in a way that’s completely believable.  Part of me thinks that Hampdon is a real place.  But it’s not, it can’t be.  I don’t particularly want Richard’s university experience.  In essence, I don’t think that I can do The Secret History justice.  Read it.  Judge for yourself. 

I’ve now moved on to Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  

The Iron Heel

The Iron Heel is wonderful.  I think I might have mentioned that last time.  But it’s really good.  I can’t say it enough.  It makes me want to read more of Jack London’s books.  I know there are a couple more of his on The List and I’m looking forward to them.  I’ve heard odd bits and bobs about his life as well, and he sounds like he was pretty cool (apart from a touch of racism).  As a young man he was caught up in the Klondike Gold Rush before becoming just a massive socialist.  After his death, he was smeared in the press as an alcoholic womaniser. 

The Iron Heel is a book in the form of a manuscript written by Avis Everhard and unearthed seven hundred years later.  The story itself features both Avis’s writing and footnotes which are alternatively amusing and depressing, written by the manuscript’s editor, scholar Anthony Meredith and follows the tale of Avis and her husband, Ernest from the time they meet to their launching of a doomed socialist revolution against the capitalist Oligarchy, dubbed the Iron Heel.   It’s a pretty standard tale of young love, really.  It’s wonderful.  The book’s filled with arguments for socialism that Ernest makes against the ruling classes, most of which would still stand up today.  London’s passion for social reform drips through the book and even when it strays into socio-political lecture territory, it stays interesting. 

One of the most interesting things about the book is London’s ideas for his alternative timeline.  The book was written in 1908 and features a history containing both bits that are wildly inaccurate and the bits that cut a bit too close to the truth.  The First Revolt takes place in spring 1918, just a few months after the actual Russian Revolution and the idea of massive corporate trusts building up and taking a stranglehold on commercial markets leading to small businesses becoming bankrupt certainly isn’t fiction.  Less close to truth, Europe becomes socialist very early on.  The whole thing’s a bit too optimistic about the role of socialism, actually.  London followed Karl Marx’s view that capitalism was unsustainable and bases his version of the 20^th Century on that.  London didn’t seem to understand that capitalism will always find a way.

Another of the things that I loved about the book is that over its cause it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad guys.  The Everhards understand that no revolution can occur without bloodshed but throughout the book they get more morally dubious.  They are just as willing to execute deserters, opponents, and those that they consider as disloyal as the Iron Heel are.  There is one incident when their hide out is chanced upon by firm Oligarchy member Philip Wickson.  Unable to execute him without revealing themselves, the group convert him to their way of thinking and turn him into a spy.

I loved this book.  Even though we know from the beginning that everything is doomed, it’s almost impossible not to get caught up in the revolutionary rhetoric of the Everhards.  Their enthusiasm for change and for social improvement is infectious.  Despite the fact that Meredith tells us both Everhards were executed, there is a tremendous feeling of hope running through the novel.  Only some of this can be attached to the Everhards.  Meredith writes at a time, centuries in the future, when the Iron Heel has been overthrown.  Even if the Everhards never see it, the book leaves us in the knowledge that they started something; something which would continue for generations.  We’re left knowing that there will be a day when the Iron Heel falls.

 

I’m now moving on to The Secret History by Donna Tartt.