Reviews

A stellar starred rating for the experience in all.
I am still disoriented from the whiplash and still trying to pick at all of that happened but it was an experience to say the least.
The story is a two parter. I'd like to say the first part was a tad slow for my liking and it felt like the narrator was too descriptive, too confused and it was easy to leave it to simmer and pick up again out of a sudden unique curiosity. However, I can see now, that the narration wasn't the issue, it was that I didn't know if I could trust him.
I love a complex narration, it doesn't give you much choice to think and you're only provided with one perspective. And even if you doubt your instincts you're forced to believe this unreliable perspective because it's all you have. Terrifying, in my opinion to be swayed loke this but it also has an underlying excitement to see where it leads you.
The second part is where we see the narrative speed up. This is where it hits you as a reader that you and your lovely protagonist are both on the same boat. You, just like him had the same instincts about a lot of the plot. You also believed him. That is when the story wraps you in and ends on such an abrupt node that you're forced to face the reality which is confusing and more complex and you're left thinking about everything you just read all again.
I loved it. Just for the fact that I wanted to throw up in the end due to all the moral delimma and revelations and all the whiplash.
Worth it.

Additionally, for the writing, the book is well written and has a certain academic quality to it if that's what you love. There's a lot of information and details along with a certain style that feels like the narrator is spilling his thoughts as they flow thought his head.

ginaparrish's review against another edition

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3.0

I think a lot of people loved or hated The Secret History, but at the end I find myself in the middle of the road. I can see how it would be a book that divides opinions, if nothing else because of the (perhaps over-confident) way in which Donna Tartt writes and the subject matter she chooses, but I finished it feeling undecided.

First off, the book is long. My ebook read 735 pages. I don’t mind that, but the way she split the chapters was absolute nonsense to me. It is very hard from the perspective of a reader to look down and see your next chapter is 175 pages long. Considering this is not a book I will read in one sitting, it’s hard to know a good place to stop.

Second, Tartt is a good writer. A distractingly good writer, at some points. And she is extremely clever about character development. Each character is unique from the others and has some likeable and unlikeable qualities. It’s hard to know who to root for, which makes for a compelling read.

But the plotting felt off to me. Overall I would consider Tartt an exhaustive writer—she makes sure you know everything. But the order in which she reveals that everything (not really plot twists, as you see them all coming) was much better in the first half than the second. She didn’t build tension in a consistent way, so around 2/3 of the way in you wonder how she is going to end it because it already feels over.

That said, the ending was a bit of a disappointment to me. There was no build up and it didn’t resolve properly. Suddenly the characters make decisions that don’t make sense. It almost feels like it was all for nothing.

I can’t say I get what all the hype is about, but I generally enjoyed reading it and, if nothing else, appreciated some of Tartt’s cleverer passages.

himbitto's review against another edition

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dark informative 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

3.75

brg1998's review against another edition

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4.0

I borrowed this on my Kindle a week ago. I like her writing style, but to be honest, there isn't a truly likable character in the story. Whether it was a main, secondary or transient character, I found nothing sympathetic about any of them, and the story was starting to feel a little bogged down (and I was only a quarter into it), so I decided to return the book early without finishing it. The next time I opened up my Kindle, meaning to go on to the next book, I found this one still there, so I swiped the page figuring that the Kindle would reset and tell me the book was gone. Nope, still there, so I read to the end of the section. Two days later the book is still on my Kindle, and I'm still reading it. I checked my online library account, and it really was returned, so apparently I was meant to finish this book! I found myself caring about the story while still not liking any of the characters. Odd for me, but hey, a new reading experience!

ryder_grant's review against another edition

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Had to return loan. Currently on waitlist

uselessmathom's review against another edition

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4.0

I found myself hovering between a 3 and a 4 for this one.

While it is, on balance, one of the most interesting reads I've had in a good spell, the book does have some glaring debut novel flaws that I feel like its most ardent fans are just glazing over (the fact that half of this book's following is made up of booktok highschoolers who fundamentally misinterpret it doesn't help the situation).

As someone else put it, the book has a 200-page section where it's a pageturner you can't put down, but it's a 500-page book. After Bunny's murder actually happens (alluded to in the opening line of the book, not a spoiler), it really comes to a screeching halt in terms of plot, with sparse moments of panicked action peppered throughout. A lot of it is people waking up drunk (I know it's college, but it gets old) and visiting one another's houses. A far cry from the run-up to the murder, by far the highlight of the piece.

The characters that actually get any dimension (Henry, Bunny) are portrayed amazingly through the prism of Richard's experience. You are shown one side of them, then another one, more flawed (as Richard's perspective sobers), and it all fits organically, forming a person that could believably exist. A big problem, in my opinion, is that the rest of the gang (+ Julian) don't really get much depth. This is, in the context of the book, mitigated by Tartt's entire "show don't tell approach", so the edges beyond which we don't get to see them seem like a sfumato towards obscurity instead of a jagged, straight line beyond which nothing was ever planned or taken into account. I still feel that it lessens the book's overall quality. I would also like to say that I am not convinced

Spoiler

Henry's

actions that act as the end resolution are justified by the character we'd seen thus far.

Those seem like big criticisms, right? So what salvages it?

The prose is complex enough to keep you thinking but never a chore to actually read. Even the parts of the book that I am most critical of due to their lack of dynamicity managed to keep my attention thanks to the engaging writing and my desire to see further character interactions, to be surprised and betrayed by them. The entire conceit of the novel, one that seems so obvious to me but is clearly not so to many readers, is an attack on the obsession with aesthetics that undergirds the most destructive, shallow, disgusting aspects of humanity, its upper classes certainly, but also those who aren't critical enough to renounce their ideals and so aspire to be like them. How fucking perfect then that this book is seen as a flagship of a distinct movement obsessed with an aesthetic style. What a beautiful olé!

I've seen people confused as to why

Spoiler

the first murder

is almost handwaved away, whereas

Spoiler

Bunny's and its consequences

occupy such a large portion of the novel, without realising that's precisely the point.

Spoiler

They don't care about the farmer, though even the cold, brooding Henry is capable of paying the least bit of lip-service, he's a local, townie, Vermonter, lower class, essentially not a human being

.

Julian's own ethos may not have been the origin of this worldview in his pupils -- they are, barring Richard, all upper-class and must have been inculcated with it from birth -- but he certainly reinforces it, adding beautiful, aesthetic-obsessed theory to buttress the idea that some people essentially matter, and some don't, in everything he teaches.

People tend to give shit to Richard as a bland audience-surrogate with no personality or development, but he's YOU, the average reader, who likewise has an innate tendency to aspire to join or merely be around the upper class and who internalises their elitist ideology unthinkingly, because that's simply what one does to progress in life. He's an unreliable narrator because he has to be one. Were he more perspicacious and contemplative, his outlook would not be suitably limited by the blinders most people wear all their lives, and he would not act the way he does, tacitly acquiescing to what his "betters" tell him at every turn.

So yes, this book fails in many aspects, a lot of them expected from a debut, but its strong suits are fucking strong!

callie_w's review against another edition

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I found the writing and characters insufferable and unconvincing. It felt like a book full of caricatures not characters. It lacked depth. Also Donna Tartt needs to EDIT, it was so longwinded.

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