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peach_pie's review against another edition
I really wanted to like this book, but man it was so depressing and anxious. And I know it’s probably the point, but the characters really aren’t likeable.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Alcoholism, Cursing, Drug use, Homophobia, Suicide, Panic attacks/disorders, Racism, Self harm, Drug abuse, Grief, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Violence, Murder, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Death, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Animal death, Addiction, Blood, and Incest
angstifies's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
enjoyed this way more than i expected!
this book is very dark and twisted, and the characters are so complex it was always so hard to understand everything they did or said.
and i personally love when a book makes me THINK, and develop theories on why the characters in the story are acting the way that they are and stuff like that, i literally could not stop writing my thoughts on the margins of the book. loved it.
this book is very dark and twisted, and the characters are so complex it was always so hard to understand everything they did or said.
and i personally love when a book makes me THINK, and develop theories on why the characters in the story are acting the way that they are and stuff like that, i literally could not stop writing my thoughts on the margins of the book. loved it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic friendship, Alcoholism, Homophobia, Suicide, and Murder
Moderate: Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Misogyny, Racism, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, Incest, Racial slurs, and Addiction
Minor: Cancer, Car accident, Classism, Xenophobia, Ableism, Cursing, Murder, Rape, Animal death, Antisemitism, Blood, Grief, Physical abuse, Self harm, and Violence
lindseyhall44's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
“Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to loose them.”
The Secret History follows Richard, a poor transfer student from California, who joins an elite classics curriculum on a whim, only to be pulled into the eccentrics and depravity of his six fellow classics students and their encouraging teacher.
As modern classic and inspiration for many of the writing minds of today, I expected to enjoy this novel greatly. However, I could have never predicted the hold it would have on me, even months after reading.
Richard was such an interesting choice as a narrator, since he emulated the “Nick Carroway effect” from the Great Gastby, navigating the line between accomplice and complicit, outsider versus infiltrator.
One aspect of the novel that gets lost in translation is its satirical premise. While it may be easy to romanticize the aspects of the novel Tartt creates, especially the setting, recognizing the privilege, racism, and elitism in higher institutions is an important part of the story.
Overall, for fans of literary fiction with a blend of thriller, I would suggest The Secret History as your next read! But as always, check trigger warnings before reading!!
The Secret History follows Richard, a poor transfer student from California, who joins an elite classics curriculum on a whim, only to be pulled into the eccentrics and depravity of his six fellow classics students and their encouraging teacher.
As modern classic and inspiration for many of the writing minds of today, I expected to enjoy this novel greatly. However, I could have never predicted the hold it would have on me, even months after reading.
Richard was such an interesting choice as a narrator, since he emulated the “Nick Carroway effect” from the Great Gastby, navigating the line between accomplice and complicit, outsider versus infiltrator.
One aspect of the novel that gets lost in translation is its satirical premise. While it may be easy to romanticize the aspects of the novel Tartt creates, especially the setting, recognizing the privilege, racism, and elitism in higher institutions is an important part of the story.
Overall, for fans of literary fiction with a blend of thriller, I would suggest The Secret History as your next read! But as always, check trigger warnings before reading!!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Drug use, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Classism, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Incest, Mental illness, Animal death, Murder, Violence, Addiction, Alcohol, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Death, Drug abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Xenophobia, Misogyny, and Toxic friendship
kers_tin's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, Incest, Violence, and Murder
Moderate: Classism, Homophobia, Antisemitism, Misogyny, Gun violence, Xenophobia, Toxic friendship, Sexual violence, Rape, Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Racism
Minor: Eating disorder, Bullying, Body shaming, and Addiction
jelliestars's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
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
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Death, Drug abuse, Islamophobia, Racism, Suicide attempt, Religious bigotry, Racial slurs, Addiction, Alcohol, Drug use, Toxic friendship, Alcoholism, Blood, Homophobia, Murder, Suicide, Violence, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Sexism, Animal death, Cursing, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Medical content, Misogyny, Animal cruelty, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Abandonment, Antisemitism, and Car accident
Minor: Eating disorder, Excrement, Pregnancy, Cultural appropriation, Forced institutionalization, and Kidnapping
aztlan's review against another edition
How does so much happen yet I felt so utterly disinterested? I was intrigued at the start and I kept listening because I wanted to know how events unfolded, but there was so much time spent on fairly mundane things and I just didn't care that much. At the point I finished, I didn't feel like picking up the book again, so I just read the synopsis and that was enough for me. It's not actually a bad book, it's just that literary fiction is not my usual genre and it was too long for me to subsist on vibes.
It also didn't help that there was a lot of slurs in this book. They made sense in context (the cast consists of young, privileged white men in their own little bubble) but it still did not make it any more enjoyable to read.
It also didn't help that there was a lot of slurs in this book. They made sense in context (the cast consists of young, privileged white men in their own little bubble) but it still did not make it any more enjoyable to read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Death, and Murder
Moderate: Xenophobia
linalina's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Minor: Antisemitism, Body horror, Classism, Physical abuse, Racism, Suicide attempt, Xenophobia, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Medical content, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Self harm, and Sexism
dingushotline's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Xenophobia, Gun violence, Homophobia, Violence, Incest, and Suicide
Minor: Rape
katiemcgregor's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Donna Tartt wrote a book so satirical that it stopped being satire and became the face of Dark Academia and I think that's pretty neat.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Violence, Classism, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Toxic friendship, Addiction, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Xenophobia, Death, Drug abuse, Grief, Gun violence, Homophobia, Mental illness, Racism, and Self harm
Moderate: Incest
3mmers's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The first problem with reviewing The Secret History is that whether you will like it is almost entirely independent of its actual quality. Your enjoyment of it is based far more on personality than on any objective factor. I loved The Secret History, but that’s more because I’m already a chronically pretentious liberal arts graduate. Liking this book does not reflect well on you. I’m a natural hater so I could both tolerate and empathize with the judgemental and discontented characters. It’s easy for me to endure a book about feeling different and special and — yes — uniquely more intelligent than your peers. To a certain extent I’ve been there. No actual castles or murder or anything but I did go to a university full of people who secretly believed that they were the only ones actually learning anything. And even more full of just the most bizarre inhuman personality quirks, like the guy who’d awkwardly wrestle every conversation on to the subject of The Smiths. If, on the other hand, you have less tolerance for really awful rich twats, I can’t honestly say that even the great writing and thriller plot will be enough to overcome just how unendurable the main cast will be for you.
In other words, you need to be down with reading a book about people you are not supposed to like even a little. I saw a reviewer on Instagram say that they hadn’t enjoyed the book because the characters were xenophobic and it blew my mind because the xenophobia is there to indicate that these are terrible people, and also because they do straight up murder an innocent guy, which might possibly be worse. It’s like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the entertainment is in the things that only the obscenely wealthy and morally decrepit people would do. Fortunately, I’ve always been fascinated in affluential decrepitude (as evidenced by a penchant for business memoirs and Knives Out) and I already liked Donna Tartt from The Goldfinch.
The second problem with reviewing The Secret History is that it’s genuinely very very good. I don’t think you have to like it even a little to acknowledge that it’s excellently written. But the trouble is that things that are good are way harder to talk about than things that are bad, especially in this case. There’s the adage from Anna Karenina that ‘happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ which applies just as well to novels as it does to personal relationships. Just about all good novels (excepting obvious outliers like House of Leaves) are good for mostly the same reasons. Bad novels, on the other hand, can be bad for all sorts of bizarre and unforeseen reasons because there is infinite variation among things that don’t work. When I think about the reasons that TSH is good they feel either self-evident (plot good) or ephemeral (plot good because compelling). A huge part of the reason that this book is so good is in its subtlety and effortlessness; in the moment it is very hard to tell that it is doing anything. The best parts of TSH only become apparent in comparison.Fortunately, TSH was also sufficiently definitive that it has some genre peers that it can be very effectively compared to.
In case you haven’t been on Instagram or TikTok recently and missed the first hand experience of this whole phenomenon, The Secret History is the definitive text for a whole literary and aesthetic sub-genre: dark academia. In literature this is characterized by a higher education setting, pronounced class tension between a comparatively poorer protagonist and the wealth and excess of their peers and of the learning establishment itself, and finally the juxtaposition between the staid calm of old and rich universities and an act of violence. Most of these books are technically academic thrillers. I’ll be calling upon Bunny by Mona Awad and If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio, both of which include direct comparisons to TSH in their back cover reviews. They’ve invited this comparison, so let’s compare, and hopefully thereby unravel why TSH looms so far above them.
The Secret History is a reverse thriller that opens with the revelation that a cohort of six Greek students attending an elite liberal arts school kill one of their peers and then attempt to hide the evidence. The thriller is in how they come to murder one of their own and how this violence permanently changes them. The most obvious, and in my mind most significant, difference between this and the general structure of the rest of the genre is that TSH has comparatively a much longer exposition. Most of the first third of book is dedicated to the good times, to what it was like before things spiralled out of control. It is comparatively slow-paced and low-tension but this long period of lightness is the crucial ingredient to the compelling plot that starts up later. Without much action or tension the primary draw of this section is aesthetic enjoyment. The appeal is the vibes of it. Remember how I mentioned dark academia is an aesthetic sub-genre in addition to a literary one? This is where that comes from. The audience can engage in vicarious enjoyment of the ease and affluence of going to your friend’s castle for the weekend. I compared TSH to Keeping Up with the Kardashians in the introduction because a part of the appeal of this sub-genre is a kind of wealth tourism. These works star blank protagonists amid the sort of eccentricity that is only tolerated in the ultra-rich because that is the experience it intends to present to the audience. We are also here to be swept into the kind of eccentricity that is only tolerated in the ultra-rich. There’s a lot more studying in this novel than there is in its two peers, more than there is in most novels with set in a school of some sort (with the exception of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik). It is aesthetically entertaining in the way of a Studio Ghibli movie; think of the many scenes in Whisper of the Heart spent watching Shizuku write. Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki used moments like these intentionally to create ‘ma’, or stillness, and it is this concept of stillness that I think of when reflecting on the slow exposition of TSH. Miyazaki used ‘ma’ to create tension. The contrast between the quiet moments made the tension and action of the dramatic moments resonate much more strongly. The technique works the same way here.
It would be a mistake to imagine that just because people enjoy The Secret History for aesthetic reasons, that it or even any of its parts have nothing to offer but aesthetic entertainment. The purpose of its slow opening is to lay the groundwork for the thriller plot at its end. Its action is compelling thanks to the strength of the set-up through inaction. The expository chapters establish fun jaunts out to the castle but they are important because these fun jaunts demonstrate the relationship between the characters and these relationships are what define and motivate the characters’ actions once they get into the thriller section. Relationships need to be very strong and effectively communicated for them to restrain behaviour in a way that feels organic rather than either contrived or random. This is most obvious in comparison. The trouble with organic storytelling elements is they can be hard to recognize in isolation. Fortunately, the biggest difference between TSH and IWWV (which otherwise have vary similar premises and character dynamics) is that IWWV doesn’t have the same long exposition and begins much closer to its action. As a consequence its characters feel artificial and unmotivated. At a fundamental level we have no reason why they should be friends if they’re all so unstable and suspicious of each other. We’ve never seen them in normal times so their relationships are unknown to us. TSH, in contrast, leans very heavily on its character dynamics so takes a very long time to establish them. It is essential for the audience to understand not only that Bunny will be murdered, but that he’s also the kind of charismatic shithead who can both be a friend and also kinda deserve it. The most important character to understand here is Henry, the undisputed leader of the group. It’s his actions and his weaknesses that will come to direct the actions of the rest of the gang when things start to go off the rails. The reason we can understand and accept the characters acting in emotional and illogical ways during the thriller section is that their emotional motivations have been clearly established before we get there. This is what makes the plot so strong.
An important and, in my opinion under appreciated, contributing factor to the strength of the overall plot is its verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is a weird concept in fiction because basically every story needs it to be successful regardless of how realistic it is. These two qualities are similar but not synonyms. Verisimilitude is the degree to which something seems like it could be true, regardless of the likelihood of it being so. It’s relevant even in speculative fiction. As an example, Game of Thrones succeeds in a large part thanks to its verisimilitude. It may have ice zombies and dragons and magic, but all the characters still behave in a way that feels accurate, including when interacting with the fantasy elements. The Secret History is a masterful demonstration of the benefits of strong verisimilitude, though, as before, its impact on the story as a whole can only really be appreciated in its absence. It is not uncommon for this sub-genre to have unnatural or supernatural material, and while TSH is very reserved in its use of them it does feature fantastical elements. Or element.I would classify the deadly bacchanal that Henry, Francis, and the twins attempt and eventually execute off-page throughout the beginning of the novel is speculative. In The Bacchae by Euripides, the clear inspiration for this ritual both on a meta-level and diagetically within the book, the ritual and subsequent madness is explicitly divine in nature. TSH treats it vaguely, to its benefit. It falls into the category of the preternatural, a popular classification of phenomena in the pre-modern and early modern period for things that were beyond the ordinary but not far enough to be supernatural. The bunny drugs in Bunny and the method acting madness that overtakes the characters in IWWV are both preternatural (in contrast to the bunny transformation ritual or Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo). The overall effect is a novel with a very strong, even spooky atmosphere where the stakes established by normal society (the police etc.) still feel relevant. The eerie bacchanal and the loyalty that the gang feels to each other and to Henry’s increasingly paranoid plots adds an otherworldly excitement to proceedings. It underlines the juxtaposition between university (a step into the adult world, sure, but ultimately safe, boring, and supervised) and the violence of three deaths that will become a key tenet of the sub-genre. The groundedness means that the eternal standbys of the thriller genre, police, emergency rooms, the threat of jail and the long-term societal consequences of the legal system, still have a place here. I complained at length in my Bunny review about the lack of verisimilitude. The book is intended to be surreal, but fails — or perhaps succeeds too well, I think it comes down to personal taste — and becomes meaningless and frustrating. Finishing it felt like a profound waste of time. However, I did take one good thing away from reading Bunny and it was an appreciation for how verisimilitude contributes to TSH’s overall tone. IWWV leans hard into its theatrical premise, quoting extremely heavily from Shakespeare, there’s at least one quote on basically every page. This is fun, but can make the action feel artificial; combined with the poorly motivated emotional changes of the characters, it can sometimes feel like a badly written episode of TV where characters act like shitheads or things go wrong because the writer needed to pull a conflict out of their ass rather than any organic progression in the story.
A final note, and one I returned to a lot while reading other books both in the dark academia sub-genre and in others, is the thematic final message of The Secret History. I really like the way the novel ends.It’s a bitter ending, not even bittersweet since the only sweetness is that some of the gang survives. All of them are irrevocably changed by their experience, their lives irrevocably ruined. I like it because the thematic character arc of it is seeing these characters that have everything lose it all, pushed down an unavoidable path by their own actions. It is very much in the pattern of Greek tragedy, the fall destined by the gods, the fatal flaw which the protagonist, despite their greatest efforts, cannot overcome. I appreciate the thematic parallel there. I also like how satisfying it is for the plot to hinge on a rich genius failing to realize the limits of his intelligence. Henry’s fatal flaw, the one that manipulates Bunny to his death, all his other friends to self-destruction, and himself to suicide is his faith in his own intelligence. His certainty that he is always the smartest person in the room drives his paranoia; his schemes are what make the plot spiral out of control. He doesn’t even have to be wrong about that self assessment. It’s that most elusive of tragic emotions, catharsis, purification through strong emotion. It’s probably good for the liberal arts student pretentious enough to put up with these characters for a whole novel to see the eventual ending that no matter how smart you are you are all too human when push comes to shove (off a muddy hiking path, into a gully). I felt that this was a much stronger thematic conclusion to a story centrally about pride. Henry and the gang can do anything they want, study what they, not work, live where they like, kill a guy in a bacchanalia, and end with the consequences of that pride crushing them back down to earth. It is important that Richard, our protagonist and the only member of the Greek class with any external responsibilities to worry about, is also the only character who is semi-functional at the conclusion of the novel. He feels existentially empty now that he has peered in to that year and a half of extravagance and excitement, but in the grand scheme of things he still has a normal life. This ending played upon my mind as I read the conclusions of the other two books. Bunny I hated because its resolution is so vaporous. It commits so hard to literary pretensions that in my opinion it fails to establish anything and it was all just a dream! IWWV is the more interesting case study. Unlike TSH it goes for a more personal conclusion, ending with the characters recognizing the fundamental nature of their relationship, which they had previously been wilfully ignorant of. I will admit a small frisson of resonance; the San Juan islands are right near where I live, I see them everyday while walking my dog. But beyond that unexpected coincidence I found myself disappointed that the literal resolution is that the guy with the most cause and motivation to do the murder did the murder. It’s not even ‘the butler did it’; its ‘the shady dude casually wiping blood off the tire iron he’s carrying around did it.’ Maybe its crass but I did expect a little more of a subversion. In TSH the subversion is that none of them get away with it, not really. No amount of money and education stops you from being human.
I’m struggling to summarize why I like The Secret History so much. It’s not just that the most impressive success of the book is in the subtlety of is execution, it’s also that basically every element of the book is so good that it’s hard to pick any one out. In the end it comes down to the creation of the perfect vibes. I think this is why it has been so popular as an aesthetic movement; the vibes are simply impeccable.
In other words, you need to be down with reading a book about people you are not supposed to like even a little. I saw a reviewer on Instagram say that they hadn’t enjoyed the book because the characters were xenophobic and it blew my mind because the xenophobia is there to indicate that these are terrible people, and also because they do straight up murder an innocent guy, which might possibly be worse. It’s like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the entertainment is in the things that only the obscenely wealthy and morally decrepit people would do. Fortunately, I’ve always been fascinated in affluential decrepitude (as evidenced by a penchant for business memoirs and Knives Out) and I already liked Donna Tartt from The Goldfinch.
The second problem with reviewing The Secret History is that it’s genuinely very very good. I don’t think you have to like it even a little to acknowledge that it’s excellently written. But the trouble is that things that are good are way harder to talk about than things that are bad, especially in this case. There’s the adage from Anna Karenina that ‘happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’ which applies just as well to novels as it does to personal relationships. Just about all good novels (excepting obvious outliers like House of Leaves) are good for mostly the same reasons. Bad novels, on the other hand, can be bad for all sorts of bizarre and unforeseen reasons because there is infinite variation among things that don’t work. When I think about the reasons that TSH is good they feel either self-evident (plot good) or ephemeral (plot good because compelling). A huge part of the reason that this book is so good is in its subtlety and effortlessness; in the moment it is very hard to tell that it is doing anything. The best parts of TSH only become apparent in comparison.Fortunately, TSH was also sufficiently definitive that it has some genre peers that it can be very effectively compared to.
In case you haven’t been on Instagram or TikTok recently and missed the first hand experience of this whole phenomenon, The Secret History is the definitive text for a whole literary and aesthetic sub-genre: dark academia. In literature this is characterized by a higher education setting, pronounced class tension between a comparatively poorer protagonist and the wealth and excess of their peers and of the learning establishment itself, and finally the juxtaposition between the staid calm of old and rich universities and an act of violence. Most of these books are technically academic thrillers. I’ll be calling upon Bunny by Mona Awad and If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio, both of which include direct comparisons to TSH in their back cover reviews. They’ve invited this comparison, so let’s compare, and hopefully thereby unravel why TSH looms so far above them.
The Secret History is a reverse thriller that opens with the revelation that a cohort of six Greek students attending an elite liberal arts school kill one of their peers and then attempt to hide the evidence. The thriller is in how they come to murder one of their own and how this violence permanently changes them. The most obvious, and in my mind most significant, difference between this and the general structure of the rest of the genre is that TSH has comparatively a much longer exposition. Most of the first third of book is dedicated to the good times, to what it was like before things spiralled out of control. It is comparatively slow-paced and low-tension but this long period of lightness is the crucial ingredient to the compelling plot that starts up later. Without much action or tension the primary draw of this section is aesthetic enjoyment. The appeal is the vibes of it. Remember how I mentioned dark academia is an aesthetic sub-genre in addition to a literary one? This is where that comes from. The audience can engage in vicarious enjoyment of the ease and affluence of going to your friend’s castle for the weekend. I compared TSH to Keeping Up with the Kardashians in the introduction because a part of the appeal of this sub-genre is a kind of wealth tourism. These works star blank protagonists amid the sort of eccentricity that is only tolerated in the ultra-rich because that is the experience it intends to present to the audience. We are also here to be swept into the kind of eccentricity that is only tolerated in the ultra-rich. There’s a lot more studying in this novel than there is in its two peers, more than there is in most novels with set in a school of some sort (with the exception of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik). It is aesthetically entertaining in the way of a Studio Ghibli movie; think of the many scenes in Whisper of the Heart spent watching Shizuku write. Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki used moments like these intentionally to create ‘ma’, or stillness, and it is this concept of stillness that I think of when reflecting on the slow exposition of TSH. Miyazaki used ‘ma’ to create tension. The contrast between the quiet moments made the tension and action of the dramatic moments resonate much more strongly. The technique works the same way here.
It would be a mistake to imagine that just because people enjoy The Secret History for aesthetic reasons, that it or even any of its parts have nothing to offer but aesthetic entertainment. The purpose of its slow opening is to lay the groundwork for the thriller plot at its end. Its action is compelling thanks to the strength of the set-up through inaction. The expository chapters establish fun jaunts out to the castle but they are important because these fun jaunts demonstrate the relationship between the characters and these relationships are what define and motivate the characters’ actions once they get into the thriller section. Relationships need to be very strong and effectively communicated for them to restrain behaviour in a way that feels organic rather than either contrived or random. This is most obvious in comparison. The trouble with organic storytelling elements is they can be hard to recognize in isolation. Fortunately, the biggest difference between TSH and IWWV (which otherwise have vary similar premises and character dynamics) is that IWWV doesn’t have the same long exposition and begins much closer to its action. As a consequence its characters feel artificial and unmotivated. At a fundamental level we have no reason why they should be friends if they’re all so unstable and suspicious of each other. We’ve never seen them in normal times so their relationships are unknown to us. TSH, in contrast, leans very heavily on its character dynamics so takes a very long time to establish them. It is essential for the audience to understand not only that
An important and, in my opinion under appreciated, contributing factor to the strength of the overall plot is its verisimilitude. Verisimilitude is a weird concept in fiction because basically every story needs it to be successful regardless of how realistic it is. These two qualities are similar but not synonyms. Verisimilitude is the degree to which something seems like it could be true, regardless of the likelihood of it being so. It’s relevant even in speculative fiction. As an example, Game of Thrones succeeds in a large part thanks to its verisimilitude. It may have ice zombies and dragons and magic, but all the characters still behave in a way that feels accurate, including when interacting with the fantasy elements. The Secret History is a masterful demonstration of the benefits of strong verisimilitude, though, as before, its impact on the story as a whole can only really be appreciated in its absence. It is not uncommon for this sub-genre to have unnatural or supernatural material, and while TSH is very reserved in its use of them it does feature fantastical elements. Or element.
A final note, and one I returned to a lot while reading other books both in the dark academia sub-genre and in others, is the thematic final message of The Secret History. I really like the way the novel ends.
I’m struggling to summarize why I like The Secret History so much. It’s not just that the most impressive success of the book is in the subtlety of is execution, it’s also that basically every element of the book is so good that it’s hard to pick any one out. In the end it comes down to the creation of the perfect vibes. I think this is why it has been so popular as an aesthetic movement; the vibes are simply impeccable.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Xenophobia, Misogyny, and Incest