Reviews with content warning for Animal death - Le Maître des illusions

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Le Maître des illusions by Donna Tartt

399 reviews

theliteraryel's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring 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? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

First and foremost, Donna Tartt's writing style is a beautiful. Her elegant and evocative tone draws you into a world where the lines between right and wrong are often blurred. The morally ambiguous characters are beautifully crafted, and their complex development keeps you questioning yours throughout the novel. One page you despise them and the next, you feel for them, heartbroken over their inner turmoil. There may be spoilers from here onwards, was hard to separate them.

Francis, a sensitive soul, is perhaps the most genuine among the group. He proves on many occasion he cares deeply about everyone in the group. He keeps going until the unbearable guilt almost consumes him. His letter to Richard in the epilogue, revealing his suicidal plan, broke my heart.

"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not."

While I was never so relieved he survived, it was so sad to see him succumbed his grandfathers pressure and married a woman he didn’t love and had to walk away from the man he loved. Despite being far from the ideal, I think, I am still glad that he survived.

Richard is the narrator. We read everything through his memories. It is so open to manipulate, as he learned from the best, how much did he manipulate us, readers? Despite all the paranoia, it is impossible not to empathize with his desperation for belonging to a group, a family, to fit in his new world.

I would’ve been unhappy anywhere.He also didn’t know how to ask for things, for help or for attention. It was heartbreaking when he was shot and waited them to realize and nobody did.

He brought most on himself. He knew it was wrong to kill Bunny, he literally had no reason to because he wasn’t involved with neither Bacchanal nor killing the farmer during, yet he went along with it because he was loyal to the fault, he adopted their crimes, was manipulated into terrible things, which ended breaking him beyond repair. He realized Henry’s ulterior motives too late. His love for Camilla was something I also not something I quite understood as we almost never saw them together, but at the end of everything, after all those years, they way he begged was one of the saddest moments in the book. He is one of the most loneliest characters I have ever read, he ends up with the ghost of Henry and even that leaves him in the end.

Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.

Henry probably the most complex character of all, charismatic, intelligent, wealthy, natural leader and yet a narcissistic manipulator who is so subtle and artful that it is almost impossible to notice, to say no. Despite knowing all his flaws, probably seeing through him before Richard does, it is really hard not to be fascinated by him. He had twisted relationships with everyone. I never quite understood why he gave in to Bunny before the Bacchanal, he seemed to dislike him and weirdly pitying him for his shitty family but it still doesn’t explain everything he let Bunny. And it was carnal after the murder of the farmer, as if almost he let Bunny to an insufferable point to justify killing him. It was same for Bunny’s family afterwards, obviously it is guilt and all, but still it is hard to understand why he took that much of weird attitude from Corcorans. There is so much to anaylize and unload just about Henry. The way he is gone, he remains enigmatic and making you question his motives till the very end.

Camilla and Charles were package deal most times. While Camilla was more silent and reserved, Charles was outgoing and fun. We never truly saw her or understood her motives. The only moment Camilla was honest and I appreciated her was at the very end, when she finally admitted her love for Henry and turned Richard down. Charles’s transformation from timid, charming and outgoing young man to dark, abusive and paranoid broken boy was an impressive reverse character development. Their complex and abusive relationship went beyond imagination all the way till incest. This turned to a breaking point for all, Henry killing himself and Charles being mentally further broken. Despite turning into a horrible person, I was sad for Charles in the end, from all that glory to living in a hole. The guilt and paranoia ate him alive. He deserved that? Maybe, probably, definitely. But still hard to witness a human breaking down to that point even if they brought it on themselves.

“And if beauty is terror,” said Julian, “then what is desire? We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?”
“To live,” said Camilla.
“To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.

Bunny was hard to like from the start, cruel, selfish, homophobic, liar, abuser and so on. The way he spoke was so pretentious and condescending all the time made his dialogues were hard to believe. He became unbearable with constant blackmailing, cruel remarks and demands. It is easy to say that he brought his own downfall, he deserved to be killed. But did he really? The biggest moral quest of all characters in the book. They could justify it in many ways but did they actually have right to kill him? Absolutely not. I disliked Bunny throughout the book, still, when he got pushed off the cliff, something tugged at my chest. It was hard to bear all that dragged and overdone funeral for him. In the light of his letter to Julian, towards the end I found myself missing him and feeling sad for his end. Manipulation at its finest, huh?

Julian was the most influential figure despite his absence. I wished we had more of his lectures. His passion and teaching style were ultimately responsible for his students’ obsessive actions? Maybe. Was he directly responsible? Of course, not. I expected he acted differently in the end, somehow mend his destructive influence on them in some ways. Instead, he immediately ran away. Maybe he was afraid for his own life, or being dragged into the murders in case they were revealed or maybe, he was simply horrified of what he had influenced. We will never know, I guess.

There are so many things to talk about this book, yet I’m stunned since I read it. I have to admit it was not an easy read, not meant to be, probably. While the book's non-linear timeline adds to its allure, some plot points feel dragged and eventually unresolved. I was so paranoid at some points I was suspicious with every single one of them. Probably how Bunny and Charles felt. I admired them, I hated them, I felt for them, I felt uneasy, I felt all the feelings. The meticulous world building and description of atmosphere sucked you in, immediately. It was almost as if feeling among them listening them talking from the corner of a room or back in the class.

The whole book is questioning beauty and morality. This exploration of beauty leads to the characters decent into guilt and destruction one by one. Donna Tartt successfully achieves to question your morals along with the rollercoaster of feelings. A true masterpiece and something to come back to, indeed.

Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.

PS: The amount of alcohol and cigarettes consumed in the book was highly disturbing. I could feel my lungs and liver give up reading it.

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gsantino32's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective 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

3.0

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startjpw23's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

In a preface to the book, we learn that a group of college students murdered a classmate. The main body of the book then starts during the previous year when Richard, a native Californian, who is the first-person narrator of the story, applies to get into a small Vermont college. More than anything, he wants to get away from California and his parents. He was previously in a college where one of the things he studied was the Greek language and literature (he didn't complete his studies there). He is accepted into the Vermont college for the fall semester. Shortly after arriving at the college, he learns that the college has a Greek study program. He becomes obsessed with getting into the program. He is initially refused by the professor in charge of the program. This professor has exacting standards about who can join. Richard eventually convinces the professor to let him join. There are only 5 other students. One of the students is the student who will later be killed. Richard and the other 4 students all have some involvement with the killing. The extent of their involvement is only revealed as the book progresses. All of the students in this Greek study program largely keep to themselves. The are pretty much only friends with each other. Everything I said above occurs very early in the book. The remainder is the events that led up to the killing and the aftermath where the students try not to get caught and them trying to deal with the knowledge that they killed someone. The story also deals with the dynamics of the group and how they interact with each other and how they interact with the professor of the Greek study program as well as other people. This is the first Dark Academia book I read. I liked it a lot.

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madilikestoread's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious 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? Yes

4.75

A great book to begin fall with! An absolutely amazing read.

Although the book is over 500 pages, I didn't want it to end.

Donna Tart has a way with words. The character development is fantastic as well as the world building.

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neverlandingonabook's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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

4.5

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anastashamarie's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.75

⭐ 2.75/5. It took me nearly the entire length of TWO Libby borrows to get through this thing. The prose is pretty, but for as floral as it is, the plot really kind of stinks. I'm not even going to do my usual "emojis for the vibes" because I'm so upset that I could even like this book that I really, really wanted to love. If you enjoyed this, look away, because I don't think you'll like what I have to say. This is a pretentious book for pretentious people.

⚠️ TWs: this book contains themes of animal death (including death of a dog), murder, incest, sexual assault, substance use, alcoholism, and suicide.

I'm REALLY struggling to understand what the hype is surrounding this book, which is saying something because I'm a fan of dark academia and murder mysteries, both of which I thought this would be, and neither of which it really delivers upon. They go to class less than a dozen times through the story and the only thing generally academic about them is that they like to read and that they're pretentious (she says, sort of tongue in cheek, almost done with her own PhD).

"But it's so atmospheric! I want to live this aesthetic!" I'm sorry but bish, what? They're a bunch of mentally ill drug addicts who can't see past their own narcissism. Did you not read this book? None of this is a pleasant aesthetic. And none of this is what college in New England or the Mid Atlantic region is actually like, if that's the aesthetic you think you like (she says again, acutely away that this might also seem pretentious and conflicted about mentioning her own collegiate experience again for that reason).

Is it atmospheric? Yes, technically. Does any of the atmosphere actually matter for the story? Debatable...and I would argue on the side of "no." There's such minimal character development and I didn't care about anyone or anything until Part 24/28 of the audiobook, when everyone began to really descend into madness in the aftereffects of the murder...and then just abruptly came to the epilogue as soon as I really started to care.

Not to mention that the atmosphere and minimal plot line are buried under mountains and mountains of purple prose. I felt like literally half the book could have been cut, such was its superfluousness. But for the word count of this book, there was very little showing and very much telling. There were points of the story where I literally exclaimed, out loud, "Why is this a retrospective? It would have been much more interesting if it happened on the page!"

Not to mention that the relationships were entirely flat because there was no foundation to them. Which maybe was the point...but if the whole point is that your characters are so unlikable that they don't even like each other, and that it's steeped in layers of pretention to really drive home how pretentious everyone is, and your plot is so shallow that you can't even drown it it -- what even is the point of the book? Is it masterful or is it just people making something out of nothing and everyone just agrees so they can be "in" on it?

The pretentiousness is the biggest problem of this book, and I don't mean in that the characters are pretentious. I get that they're supposed to be, and I get that their own narrow prospective ends up being their downfall (that, at least, this book does well). But where my problem lies is that the book itself reads as entirely pretentious, like the author herself is on some high horse about how she knows all this stuff about classicism and you're either part of the group or not. It's definitely "a modern classic," in the sense that it has a bunch of allegories and symbolism that my AP English teachers would go wild for.

Ugh, anyway. I'm going to stop because I feel like these awful characters are rubbing off on me.

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takarakei's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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

3.25

I give this book props for being the OG Dark Academia (which is why I read it), but personally I am more interested in more recent additions to that genre. That being said I can respect it for the influence this book has had. I like that the subgenre has moved into a place of critiquing elitist academia in a not so subtle way (I feel that any critique of academia in this was too vague to be taken seriously).
I definitely feel like it could have ~100 pages of monotony edited out, or those parts should have been replaced by more time with Julian in the classroom / explaining the catalyst of what they were studying influencing the original group (and why they were in the woods...)
I found it interesting to think about the moral quandary of Bunny being a supremely unlikeable character and how we as readers can empathize with the desire to get rid of him from the other character's POV. All the characters are disastrously flawed and the only one I actually feel bad for in the end is Camilla. If you can stand to read about pretentious flawed horrible characters who are continually awful to each other then I guess it's an interesting character study book.

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