vivisms_82 's review for:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
3.0
challenging dark mysterious slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Loveable characters: No
Firstly the narration of this book was not good. Ok it was terrible. The book is told in the first person by a man that is 28 years old in the present day but was about 20/21 when the events of the book occurred. Needless to say I was supremely thrown off by the voice actor who sounds like a 12 year old boy from the South; and not from California or New England like the characters are supposed to be :/ So I did a quick glance back at the details of my audiobook to discover that the narrator is none other than Donna Tartt herself!! Umm wtf? You would think that the author having written the material would want to give it the execution it deserves by employing someone that is (a) an adult man, (b) can deliver a convincing Californian and New England accent and (c) can give varying intonations to each character so that don't all sound the same. Also, which I found so irritating is how she says words that start with "wh" - so much breath and more of the sound I imagine an owl speaking for the first time would make. I am going to give Donna Tartt the benefit of the doubt and assume that she had indeed booked a qualified narrator but he got laryngitis or had a flight delay and she had to step in last minute to do the narration of her own work. I cannot otherwise fathom why for goodness sake she did it. Narration is more than just reading the material in front of you and this is a perfect example of that. On the flip side, one would expect the writer of the novel to have you know, known the writing so well and how it should be read that it would be flawless. Baffling. Truly one of the most disappointing narrations I have ever heard. If I wasn't so pressed for time I would have put a hold on a copy at the library. So my advice would be if you are interested in reading this book, do yourself a favour and DO NOT LISTEN TO THE AUDIOBOOK, get the actual book instead. 

Now to the book... It is a hard slog no doubt. (Over 22 hrs as an audiobook and the tangible copy is 640 pages). So is the payoff worth it? Well that depends on personal taste. I do however see its value as a modern classic for sure. On the surface it looks like a bunch of manipulative rich kids with zero morals or conscience that have a pretentious fascination of Greek philosophy. If you dig a little deeper, you get that it is also about the pursuit of beauty, friendships; cliques; the want to fit in; the aftermath of living with an atrocity you were part of; realising you are forever tied to people that you don't particularly know all that well or like and obviously much more. 

Having said that, did I enjoy it for entertainments sake? No. Did I feel satiated at the end? No. Did it make me think? Yes, definitely. The thing is, because it is told in the first person in the truest sense - as in we the reader are only told as much as this one person (Richard) knows - no one else contributes, we are left wondering a great deal. Which I think is the point. Richard admits early on he his a liar for one and that his memory is foggy at best. Also, we are given clues such as Richard considering himself a "bystander" in all this which is not true; he was an active participant. He tells us so much yet omits who actually
pushed Bunny.
Which he would know. Why doesn't he say? Side note, he was a regular drug user and drinker so that would also blur his memory too I imagine but I think he simply tells us the narrative he wants to tell. All we can go by are his account of people, conversations and events that took place. I know many have argued that we could say that for any book written in the first person and yes that is true. But Richard is frequently shown to be false and thus that argument is no longer plausible. What makes this book both so brilliant yet so frustrating is that because Richard is such an unreliable narrator, we don't know for sure what is and isn't fact. Half of me thinks this book sux and "well what's the point then if we don't know the truth 100%?", the other half thinks this book holds up because "can't we say that all of us are unreliable narrators as when we recount something, anything, it is from our perspective and with that comes a bias that could be subconscious or on purpose?" "And besides, this books offers so much to chew on; relationship complexities, living with our actions, complicity, dangerous obsession for mental freedom, so what does it matter if we don't know the truth?"

I came to 3/5 rating with the following breakdown: part #1 4/5, part #2 2/5. 

When you know early on the narrator is not reliable, there is no need to include several pointless conversations and scenes that you already know may or mayn't be true and most of all offer nothing to the book. The section at the funeral was over 50 pages for goodness sake and what happened could have been even generously and graphically told in half of that! Another reason for my rating is I personally like books over 600 pages to have some page turning - book one does but book two is slowwwww. If this was a little tighter - say even 100 pages less, it may have improved the pacing to more my liking and given it more of an impact - to me that is. I get that this may be on purpose so we can feel the days and weeks post murder to be awful as it would be for these 5. But at the end of the day a book needs to hold my attention and book two felt like an overfluffed drag with a so-so ending and many unanswered questions. I mean who knows why Henry
shot himself? He and Camilla seemed to be the least affected by the murder of murder.


Obviously I am in the minority and actual respected critics will think me extremely dim in my view. Oh well.
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