Reviews with content warning for Incest - The Secret History

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

1852 reviews

mirandale's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.75

A very slow, very intense book that I had to finish just to see how it ended. It just keeps getting darker and darker but I somehow couldn’t look away.

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schneehutte's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.5

After letting the book sit on my bookshelf for almost one year and a half, I've finally come to read it. And boy, I don't regret a thing!

The writing style from Donna Tartt was a surprise for good. Although it makes sense that a book about Classics students would have a particular style of writing itself - "literary" writing, so to speak - it wasn't tiring or repetitive to read. I appreciated the author's attention to detail and visuals in this book, and you can see each character's mannerisms through the writing. I am not sure if it was intentional, but I loved the parallels to Dostoevsky's work. I would describe "The Secret History" as a modern retelling - with sparkles of dark academia tropes - of "Crime and Punishment", which sounds like the exact thing I would enjoy. Therefore I am not surprised to rate this book so high on my list.

I suppose I can understand the disappointment of the people who expected a murder mystery out of this book - so I am here to tell you now: it really isn't. The murder is revealed in the prologue, and it becomes quite clear who has done it as the pages go by. Besides, I believe it was the author's intention to portray all the characters in the group as being to some extent responsible for the murder, as it is their shared guilt that haunts them and leads them to their downfall (Crime and Punishment vibes!).

The characters aren't lovable, nor they are meant to be. I kept in mind that this whole story was told from the perspective of the main character Richard, who acted for the most part almost like a bystander in many events of the book. Therefore I would assume that his vision of many characters such as Camilla, Henry, Julian, and many more, is completely romanticized and inaccurate. But I believe that only comes to show how unlikable in "real life" Richard truly is, and how he fits with the rest of the group by being just as arrogant as everyone else - despite coming from humbler origins.

However, the scene where he wants to hurt - even rape - Camilla surprised me how low he was. I am not sure it fits entirely his character and I must confess, I had to read that passage a couple of times...

I thought the pacing hurt the overall progression a little. Despite liking slow-paced books, some passages were daunting to read and it was difficult to keep up with the motivation. But when it ramps up, then it ramps up - and you have no idea where the book is going, which adds more and more to the mysterious aspect that surrounds the characters around Richard (especially Henry). Almost all the characters - even not-so-important ones such as Judy - had strong personalities and I liked reading about them.

The ending was somewhat satisfying, but I don't think there is much to add to this. A story this dark and creepy couldn't have a positive ending without sounding strange - so I am glad it decided to take a "middle-ground" route, so to speak.

What I would have enjoyed seeing more was the ritual that Henry, Camilla, Francis, and Charles did, which resulted in the death of the first man. I think the exploration of "losing control of yourself" could have been more interesting as just saying "yeah we kinda did that" and having just a monologue about it.

Despite referencing Greek myths and literature, it is not necessary to have much knowledge of them to understand the story, which is good. I'm on break right now, do you think I want to spend my time doing supplementary reading?

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iitaviinisalo's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

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

4.75

4.5/-4.75/5
I think this book heavily falls off after Bunny dies, but i still liked it. I think it's good that Henry died, Charles maybe would have been better that way too. I'm glad Camilla got away even tho she's not happy. I wish Francis and Richard could be happy and together and not married to random girls.

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buzzybuzzybeefudge's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

I wanted to hate this book, but I couldn't. It was too gripping and it was really fun to listen to on audiobook. Some of the prose was genuinely gorgeous. I am allowed to gag at the ending though because I personally loathe "this is what happened to all the characters" endings.

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_david_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.5

I somewhat enjoyed the book.

I liked the niche approach of student choice: the outgoing introverted dark academia type of students of classic languages. This is a group which I can recognise in fellow students from my high school days, who coincidentally also studied classic languages.

The plot is interesting to me. It's a very believable story of a group of people who make very bad choices which seem the easiest to them in the moment, but which have long lasting consequences.

One thing I wish the story improved is character depth. The main character and Henry are interesting. Bunny is interesting but not very rounded. But Charles, Camilla and Francis are underdeveloped eventhough they were part of the main cast of characters. The main character's crush on Camilla also made my eyes roll. It was very over the top and often distracted from whatever she was doing. Her appearance got mentioned waaaaay too often. I'd rather have known more about her personality.

Somewhere around the halfway point the story becomes very slow. You might have to push through long paragraphs about seemingly unimportant details. There shouldn't have been much more of it or I would've dropped the book. Speaking of Tartt's writing style: either do not mind having to look up words or be accepting of only understanding the general gist of a word/foreign sentence and moving on.

The ending was very satisfying to me. The effect of the events in the story are different per character. I found this very interesting to read about. Something clicked when the main character described that the main cast is a group of naturally insecure people who have been taught to feel superior instead. This explains a lot of the behaviour shown.

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hollyatree's review

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dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.5

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tamara_loves_reading's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

Was für eine beeindruckende Geschichte! Ich bin keine Literatur-Kennerin, aber ich fand das Buch zu jeder Zeit spannend und ‚unhinged‘. Würde ich mich mit griechischer Literatur auskennen, könnte ich wahrscheinlich auch über Zusammenhänge berichten.
Ich denke in den Kommentaren wurde schon alles gesagt, was gesagt werden kann.
Danke an bookstagram, ohne es wäre ich nicht auf dieses buch aus den 90ern aufmerksam geworden!
-1 ⭐️ weil ich die Charaktere eher oberflächlich fand. Vielleicht war das auch der Sinn und Zweck der Geschichte 🤔

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