Reviews

all the characters are insufferable yet I somehow have felt bad for all of them and loved them all at some point during the story? I was never able to guess the next turn of events and it was super intriguing, I personally liked it although I don't think it's a book everybody will love

_midnighbooks's review against another edition

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5.0

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.

I'm so surprised and also a bit confused about my feelings towards this book. To tell the truth, I started this book expecting to end up with the general appreciation I usually have towards well-written classics, maybe be impressed by the plot and the characters. I honestly did not expect to have this maddening obsession with it.
It did take some time for me to fall into the story, and I did put it aside for a while, but once I picked it up again, at around page 100 or so, I could not put it back down.

What surprised me at the end of the book, was how attached I was to these characters. Throughout the book, I found myself quite unsympathetic with them. I've read a couple of reviews stating how the characters were pretentious and unrelatable. I see the truth in that, but I didn't mind it one bit. To me, it was a story about horrid unjustified actions committed by these careless characters that were so absorbed in their own world with little fear of consequences. So imagine my utter shock at my very own feelings of sadness and empathy towards these very same characters!

It might be the dark academia aesthetics of the book (which I'm sucker for), or all the greek talk, or perhaps I'm simply attracted to the unrealness and the complete messed-up-ness of vain, superior and miserable youth. There was just a certain appeal to them, even when you thought they were awful; and just like the main character, I found myself absolutely fascinated by them.

But I'm not being entirely fair, I say they're 'awful', but in truth, not entirely. I was expecting absolutely unrelatable, arrogant, and vile characters. They were not so. Eccentric as they might seem, they were not so hostile and unreachable.

The story, told by the main character Richard, is about a murder mystery. The mystery being the 'why' and 'how' rather than the 'who'. When getting into an elite college in America, Richard who wants to join the Greek class, finds it's unusually hard to get in, what's with the teacher being quite selective and the class having literally 5 students. These students seem to extend the exclusivity of their greek class to their life outside of it. When Richard finally joins the circle, he is still to a degree an outsider and the book is just amazingly shrouded in mystery and suspense .

The last part of the book deals with the aftermath of the murder and how it affects each of the characters. There remained so many unanswered questions and there are so many details I'd love to read all about (so kindly direct me towards some good fanfic, if you would please.)

This was simply a book that I wanted to go on forever. There is the type of books that you don't even find it in you to finish, some you just want to finish and be over with them, some you love so much that you want to devour them in an hour just to know what happens, and some you're completely content with them going on and on and on. The Secret History falls in the latter category for me, despite it being a mystery where you're usually impatient to know how it ends, I found that I didn't mind it one bit if it took a lifetime to tell me what happened.

I feel like I should also talk about the writing in this book. Might be a phase, or just this very specific book, but I'm absolutely content with books that take page after page talking about the horrid and unlit corridors of one's soul and the miserable abyss of their very essence in the fanciest of English wordings, and yes please, go on and compare it to that wretched mythical figure and delve in all sort of character analysis, I'll get my wine.

I'll say it, I didn't care much about the main character, I hardly ever do with main characters, to me they're mere narrators, but I appreciated Tartt's boldness in showing some dark sides to him. Richard, being the most normal and tame of the lot, did have some alarmingly twisted thoughts here and there, and I just found myself wanting to see more of the true nature of each character. Blessed, no one in this book was anywhere near having or being a moral compass.

To conclude, this is definitely going to my top reads, and let's not be surprised if I go into a reading slump only reading this book in a loop.

At one time I had liked the idea, that the act, at least, had bound us together; we were not ordinary friends, but friends till-death-do-us-part. This thought had been my only comfort in the aftermath of Bunny's death. Now it made me sick, knowing there was no way out. I was stuck with them, all of them, for good.

alouette's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-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

yami21's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

5.0

amber_c's review against another edition

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dark 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

4.5

takeahike's review against another edition

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5.0

4.5 stars rounded up to 5.

This character driven story slowly drew me in. The book starts with the murder of Bunny. After that, it tells the story leading up to his murder and the resulting consequences.
The story is narrated by Richard Papen. Richard leaves his home in California to attend a small college in Vermont. In a short space of time, he becomes involved with a small group of privileged intellectuals. He and the group are students of Classics professor Julian Morrow. Julian is beloved by his students and they hold him in the highest esteem. He leads them in a search for beauty and truth.
"And now," said Julian, when everything was quiet, "I hope we are all ready to leave the phenomenal world and enter into the sublime?"
The group of students: Richard, Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran, twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, Francis Abernathy and Henry Winter become corrupted in their pursuit of the mysteries of ancient Greece. Their actions step out of the bounds of morality, with one step leading to another.

djenkin96's review

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dark mysterious sad fast-paced

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

5.0

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