A review by nakedkitties
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This certainly wasn't the book for me as I do not understand why people hype this up so much. I like the setting, the old private college in New England and all that but the premise was slightly ridiculous. A professor that only takes on 5 students at a time because he's pretty much the only teacher they have their entire university career?? Even in a private setting I can't buy this ever actually occurring. Students who are in some sense consumed by the Greek tragedies and myths they learn, but at the same time couldn't care less about school or graduating? All of the characters are rather unlikeable, which is normally fine for me, but in this case I didn't have any strong emotions about any of them as they all fell rather flat. I couldn't keep any of the male characters straight due to this lack of personality so I had to keep telling myself oh, this is "the poor one", "the dumb one", "the ringleader", "the alcoholic" and "the gay one"....which is really NOT something I want to do. While I think the character of Henry might be the coldest of the group, realistically they're all sociopathic so even that isn't a discerning quality. There's not even a feeling of tension as you don't think they're ever really at risk of any genuine consequence or punishment. And for the love of god why are the chapters so long?!?!
Beautiful writing and nice setting so I'll go with 2.5 but I won't be picking up Tartt's works again.
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