About the Book
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.
Format: Audiobook (22h 4m) Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 30th September 2010 [1992] Genre: Thriller
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My Review
I first read this when it was published in paperback in 1993 but I was given an opportunity to reread it when it was picked by my book club as a change from the new releases we usually choose. Like me, many book club members came along clutching their own battered copies of the book. I decided to listen to the audiobook as it is narrated by the author. I have to say she does a brilliant job of bringing the characters she created to life.
The Secret History is a long book and it isn’t until about the half way point that the murder (which we know pretty much from the beginning will take place) occurs. But somehow the author manages to keep the tension going through those first three hundred pages as our narrator, Richard Papen, describes the events that lead up to the murder and then its aftermath.
Newly arrived at Hampden College in Vermont, Richard becomes part of a group of students studying Ancient Greek under the tutelage of classics professor Julian Morrow, who limits enrolment in his classes to a hand-picked coterie. Unlike Richard, the other five – Henry, Francis, Bunny and twins, Camilla and Charles – come from privileged backgrounds. Richard is dazzled by them but finds himself amongst people who, unlike him, don’t have to worry where the next dollar will come from. This results in him having to tell elaborate lies about his background and hide his penury, even if that means nearly freezing to death during a Vermont winter. Bunny, although his parents are rich, has been cast adrift as a kind of challenge to make his own way in the world, his response to which is to sponge off his well-off friends.
This is not a story where you find yourself rooting for any of the characters; they’re all pretty unlikeable, including the victim. If I had to pick the least unlikeable it would be Francis who does act most like a true friend to Richard. The group indulge in a hedonistic lifestyle of wild parties, drink and drugs. Not much study seems to go on. Their willingness to see themselves as outside normal moral boundaries results in a series of shocking events which finds them increasingly needing to lie and deceive others. Richard willingly goes along with them because of his desire to remain part of the group. The author shows us how their actions leave them, in different ways, irrevocably damaged by the act of having taken another’s life.
Immersive is an often overused word but it’s fully justifiable as a description of The Secret History, the book which effectively gave rise to the dark academia literary genre.
In three words: Dark, suspenseful, compelling
Try something similar: If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio
About the Author
Donna Tartt is an American author who has achieved critical and public acclaim for her novels, which have been published in forty languages. In 2003 she received the WH Smith Literary Award for her novel, The Little Friend, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch. (Photo: Goodreads)
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