Reviews

The Secret History (Abridged Version) by Donna Tartt

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kailinyoh's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.5

“it was one of the reasons i loved him: for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person i was when i was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be.”

629 pages of booze, greek, drugs, the classics, bad people, academia, etc. etc. i couldn’t get myself to stick with it until i hit 100+ pages in, this one was a tough read.

ykc_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Just picture a college experience where there was greater murder and less beer pong. Tartt's perverse satisfaction in this darkly comic story about affluent students who can't decide between academics and crime. It's similar to a warped manual on how to get rid of all the evidence with a touch of old Latin and Greek classics.

dark_library_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

berrytart's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

dear lord this book was hard to get through, i like the thought of the book and the way it ended. but i nearly cried tears of relief when it was over. everyone was insufferable which i did like!! i’ll most likely never reread this book again though 😃

(francis best character!!)

Content Warnings

beforeyouandidie's review against another edition

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dark inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

blackenedwhiplash's review against another edition

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Despite being slow as molasses, I kept on reading this book thinking there was going to be some great twists considering this book’s reputation. Plus the writing itself is good, and hearing Donna Tartt narrating the novel is nice since she has a great voice (though it is jarring hearing a woman with a southern accent narrating the first person perspective of a young man from California). And at first, the characters feel real and interesting. But as the story progresses, the characters feel more like parodies of themselves and become increasingly ridiculous. Even in the beginning, it doesn’t make sense for any of the characters besides Henry to be a part of such an exclusive class of Ancient Greek. I mean, none of them act like they give a single shit about Greek and nothing about their personalities or backgrounds seem to fit with their academic pursuits. Henry is the only character I can actually believe would be in such a weird college class arrangement.

Events go from believable to outrageous, and the conversations leading up to the murder of a classmate are repetitive. Details are constantly contradictory (Francis making out with Camilla in the beginning and them acting like a couple but suddenly Francis has always been gay and everyone always knew it?) and it feels like the author forgot to change certain details during revisions.

After the underwhelming ending of “Book 1” I looked up a detailed synopsis of the rest of the book to see if it would even be worth finishing and the rest of the novel plays like a melodramatic soap opera where everything just gets unbelievably worse and worse, cliche after cliche. Like Tartt wanted to take Murphy’s Law and beat it to death mercilessly. It also sounds like it ends up anticlimactic with kind of a non-ending so yeah I’m glad I read the footnotes instead of going through another 10 hours of the audiobook listening to events unfold at the speed of sloth. I honestly do not get how so many people love this book, I think it would appeal to insecure high school girls who think not finding their favorite CD at the shopping mall is a tragedy that means that the world is against them and that they’d be better off dead because no one can ever understand their pain while their parents spoil them rotten. As for this book being a classic? How? Why?