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.