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lumya 's review for:
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
That hollow feeling when you're done with a book you'll never get to experience again? Yeah, this was The Secret History for me.
The Secret History pulls you in with a murder and keeps you focused with its atmosphere. Just like her characters think, Tartt writes by putting aesthetics first, although the story is so interwoven it cannot truly be said to come second. The details are how you distinguish opinion from truth, and the novel is filled with them: interactions between two characters you don't quite understand until four hundred pages later, facts we realize were only biased interpretations, glances that gain intensity only in the last chapter.
It all appears effortless, but one can guess how much work went into creating such a seamless environment and sinking the reader into it. The writing has been described as snobbish; I would say the opposite. The characters are undoubtedly snobs, trying very hard to be different—as if different meant falsely superior to all of humankind—and they speak as if pretty words mattered more than making sense. The writing carries the air of their personalities, as Richard is the one sharing the story with us. When people claim the focus on descriptions of unimportant matters is snobbish, all I can think to say is: that was the point.
Tartt manages to make these people sound sane when they are not, convincing us as they convince themselves of the inevitability of their actions, the fairness of their thoughts, the goodness of their hearts. When I say Tartt, what I really mean is Richard, since the reason this works at all is that he is such a perfectly unreliable narrator. It is a true talent to write six hundred pages of believable doubts, and the many years that went into writing this story are neither wasted nor surprising. There is nothing certain in The Secret History, save for the quality of the writing and the hatred I felt for its snobbish, delusional, close-minded characters.
For a good portion of the novel, I was quite angry at the way women were written. Camilla, especially—whom I slowly watched turn into a dull love interest—but also all of the other female characters Richard encounters. All are reduced to their looks, analyzed physically in ways none of the men ever were, interpreted as dumb creatures meant for lust and sex and little else, extravagant and loud like a patriarchal mind might describe overly emotional teenage girls. Camilla is the most interesting of all the women he writes about, yet his misogyny prevents us from ever truly learning about her. The other male characters of the group we can grasp fairly easily by reading between the lines. For Camilla, it is as if Richard never even conceived of looking at her outside his biased, lustful view, and all we know of her comes from brief, fragmentary information at the end of the novel. She is, to me, the most interesting mystery of The Secret History.
The Secret History pulls you in with a murder and keeps you focused with its atmosphere. Just like her characters think, Tartt writes by putting aesthetics first, although the story is so interwoven it cannot truly be said to come second. The details are how you distinguish opinion from truth, and the novel is filled with them: interactions between two characters you don't quite understand until four hundred pages later, facts we realize were only biased interpretations, glances that gain intensity only in the last chapter.
It all appears effortless, but one can guess how much work went into creating such a seamless environment and sinking the reader into it. The writing has been described as snobbish; I would say the opposite. The characters are undoubtedly snobs, trying very hard to be different—as if different meant falsely superior to all of humankind—and they speak as if pretty words mattered more than making sense. The writing carries the air of their personalities, as Richard is the one sharing the story with us. When people claim the focus on descriptions of unimportant matters is snobbish, all I can think to say is: that was the point.
Tartt manages to make these people sound sane when they are not, convincing us as they convince themselves of the inevitability of their actions, the fairness of their thoughts, the goodness of their hearts. When I say Tartt, what I really mean is Richard, since the reason this works at all is that he is such a perfectly unreliable narrator. It is a true talent to write six hundred pages of believable doubts, and the many years that went into writing this story are neither wasted nor surprising. There is nothing certain in The Secret History, save for the quality of the writing and the hatred I felt for its snobbish, delusional, close-minded characters.
For a good portion of the novel, I was quite angry at the way women were written. Camilla, especially—whom I slowly watched turn into a dull love interest—but also all of the other female characters Richard encounters. All are reduced to their looks, analyzed physically in ways none of the men ever were, interpreted as dumb creatures meant for lust and sex and little else, extravagant and loud like a patriarchal mind might describe overly emotional teenage girls. Camilla is the most interesting of all the women he writes about, yet his misogyny prevents us from ever truly learning about her. The other male characters of the group we can grasp fairly easily by reading between the lines. For Camilla, it is as if Richard never even conceived of looking at her outside his biased, lustful view, and all we know of her comes from brief, fragmentary information at the end of the novel. She is, to me, the most interesting mystery of The Secret History.