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A review by blackenedwhiplash
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
Despite being slow as molasses, I kept on reading this book thinking there was going to be some great twists considering this book’s reputation. Plus the writing itself is good, and hearing Donna Tartt narrating the novel is nice since she has a great voice (though it is jarring hearing a woman with a southern accent narrating the first person perspective of a young man from California). And at first, the characters feel real and interesting. But as the story progresses, the characters feel more like parodies of themselves and become increasingly ridiculous. Even in the beginning, it doesn’t make sense for any of the characters besides Henry to be a part of such an exclusive class of Ancient Greek. I mean, none of them act like they give a single shit about Greek and nothing about their personalities or backgrounds seem to fit with their academic pursuits. Henry is the only character I can actually believe would be in such a weird college class arrangement.
Events go from believable to outrageous, and the conversations leading up to the murder of a classmate are repetitive. Details are constantly contradictory (Francis making out with Camilla in the beginning and them acting like a couple but suddenly Francis has always been gay and everyone always knew it?) and it feels like the author forgot to change certain details during revisions.
After the underwhelming ending of “Book 1” I looked up a detailed synopsis of the rest of the book to see if it would even be worth finishing and the rest of the novel plays like a melodramatic soap opera where everything just gets unbelievably worse and worse, cliche after cliche. Like Tartt wanted to take Murphy’s Law and beat it to death mercilessly. It also sounds like it ends up anticlimactic with kind of a non-ending so yeah I’m glad I read the footnotes instead of going through another 10 hours of the audiobook listening to events unfold at the speed of sloth. I honestly do not get how so many people love this book, I think it would appeal to insecure high school girls who think not finding their favorite CD at the shopping mall is a tragedy that means that the world is against them and that they’d be better off dead because no one can ever understand their pain while their parents spoil them rotten. As for this book being a classic? How? Why?
Events go from believable to outrageous, and the conversations leading up to the murder of a classmate are repetitive. Details are constantly contradictory (Francis making out with Camilla in the beginning and them acting like a couple but suddenly Francis has always been gay and everyone always knew it?) and it feels like the author forgot to change certain details during revisions.
After the underwhelming ending of “Book 1” I looked up a detailed synopsis of the rest of the book to see if it would even be worth finishing and the rest of the novel plays like a melodramatic soap opera where everything just gets unbelievably worse and worse, cliche after cliche. Like Tartt wanted to take Murphy’s Law and beat it to death mercilessly. It also sounds like it ends up anticlimactic with kind of a non-ending so yeah I’m glad I read the footnotes instead of going through another 10 hours of the audiobook listening to events unfold at the speed of sloth. I honestly do not get how so many people love this book, I think it would appeal to insecure high school girls who think not finding their favorite CD at the shopping mall is a tragedy that means that the world is against them and that they’d be better off dead because no one can ever understand their pain while their parents spoil them rotten. As for this book being a classic? How? Why?