Which came this year, after Emily and I read Emma together and needed to turn to something a little... I would say lighter, but that's the wrong word. Faster, perhaps? Less mundane?
And mundane The Secret History is not. Tartt has crafted a suspense of the highest brow here, following a group of exceedingly pretentious college students through their studies of Ancient Greek. She looks, in great detail, at how their lofty philosophical ideals come into play--or don't, as the case may be--in real life, peeling back the layers of the group's pretension until readers realize that, at heart, they are just like every other group of college kids in the world: partaking in copious amounts of sex, drugs and alcohol, and generally trying to reinvent who they are, where they've come from, and what they want to be when they grow up.
Except, of course, for the murder. Most college kids don't commit murder (I hope.)
Tartt reveals the cruel deed on approximately page 2 of the novel, so for those few of you who haven't read this, I haven't ruined anything. Read it anyway, I promise. And then we can talk about it. Because it is eminently discussable. There are virtually no likeable characters, if you list out their characteristics and motivations, and yet we sort of don't hate them all? Even though they are murderers? And there isn't much whodunit mystery, because we know who did it from the beginning. And I have no idea in what year--or even decade--the novel is supposed to be set, because sometimes it seems like it must be the 60s or so, but then they have a college computer. So that's confusing.
Small details aside, though, the novel is a masterpiece of suspense. The creep-level of Tartt's novel is due in large part to how believable it all is. It seems such a natural progression of events, from cover-ups to frustration to outright killing, that it is easy to forget how downright terrible the murder is in the first place. And Tartt absolutely masters the psychology of it all, how it impacts each member of the group and the group overall. It's actually hard to say which is more suspenseful, the build-up to the act itself, or the fallout from it, but that's part of what makes it so wonderfully captivating.
I know I'll be picking up Tartt's new novel, due out this fall.
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For those who have read this and Tana French, does anyone else see similarities between this and The Likeness? Creepy college kids with secrets to hide, excluding themselves from normal college life in favor of the company of each other?
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The Secret History | Donna Tartt | September 1992 | Vintage | Paperback | 576 pages | Buy from an independent near you
