Reviews with content warning for Self harm - The Secret History

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The Secret History by Donna Tartt

313 reviews

schwambibambi's review

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dark reflective tense slow-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

5.0

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avokaitotoast's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective 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

5.0

Short Review (TL;DR):

Extra fun read it you have even the most basic knowledge of greek philosophy or tragedies
Made me think way too much of my old literature professors (can’t tell you if that’s in a good way or bad way, i have no idea)
really fucking good.

Long Review:

I could see how this might be a boring read for some. It’s slow, it’s not incredibly thrilling, it’s fairly predictable — and yet it’s incredibly thought provoking. It’s philosophical at the end of the day, rather than a riveting thriller. To me this book felt like if the concept of an epic poem or philosophical allegory had been applied to 20th century prose.

The characters are unlikeable, flawed to an extreme, and lack a sense of uniqueness that many of us look for in modern literature. They are very much caricatures of the over enthusiastic literature student — rejecting modernity, drinking whiskey, smoking excessive amounts of cigarettes. However, I think that works in its favor. These characters are so incredibly out of touch with the world, so isolated, and in turn are out of touch with themselves and their own morality.

There is a tension between the characters — in the first half — that mimics the academic rivalary between philosophical schools of thought: the stoic versus the epicuric, with the skeptic observing. The constant fight for what they think is higher knowledge (but in reality is a hopeless grapple for control and validation) turns catastrophic and it becomes a tale of shattering perspectives, crumbling realities, and the ever-present philosophical question of “what is good? and what is evil?”.

You don’t have to have interest or knowledge of greek philosophy to enjoy this at all (mine is Super Basic at best), however there’s a lot of really cool elements of classic greek philosophies and tragedies to be enjoyed if you do. I also really enjoyed how, despite being a chaos of greek stories, the entire story ends up almost Machiavellian in nature.

I honestly can’t wait to re-read this and analyse it more throughly. I think it will be fun to re-read some greek tragedies first though, for sure.

I’m also just rambling at this point. I quite literally just finished and trying to get out everything Ive thought while reading this succinctly is apparently impossible.

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koiolee's review against another edition

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challenging 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? Yes

3.75

Maybe I'll up the star rating after i mull it all over. But this book was incredibly slow. Wonderful prose and addictive writing. I'm left feeling like I'm a pig trotting through mud. I'm happy, but still going so very slow. I think this book would be wonderful for people interested in classics or Greek for them to cross reference, find lil tidbits, analyze why certain paragraphs were there necessary or even what they're alluding to. Unfortunately that's not me, i did not do that and it was a fine enough read. A bit long, a bit tedious, but not a bad read at all.

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