A review by bratatouille
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

2.5

The first half of this I really enjoyed! This fall into a cultish existence where moral judgement becomes entirely skewed through the seek of something higher is entirely up my alley. The characters were diverse and intriguing. Although slower than what I typically prefer, I was willing to allow Miss Donna her lengthy asides. The use of literary devices throughout the work is expert. She’s wonderful at showing and not telling, which is something I thoroughly enjoy in an author. All that being said, Book 2 sucked. It was over dramatic, frustrating, and parts of the plot felt incredibly lazy. It hinges entirely on the trait of a character that was barely even alluded to in Book 1. If looking at a wiki page or summary of the contents of The Secret History, it would seem like an exciting and wild topsy turvy story of collision after collision within a corrupt group of people. However, at a certain point, the author’s writing becomes so drawn out and irrelevant that you entirely lose the thrill of the interesting events in the expanse of the dull. There are several characters and instances that are thrust into the reader which have no effect on anything in the slightest and also never come up again. The author low key talks shit about the only relevant female character the entire book. The main protagonist is incredibly uninteresting and sort of a dick. Every other character is undeniably a dick and they all suck, but at least they’re interesting. There was so much classism and misogyny that wasn’t really justified by the context. The author? Sort of? Give the same weight of absurdity to both gayness and incest?? So much of this was head spinning. Am I glad I read it? Sure. I can understand, from a wide lens, why this book garners the reputation that it does. However, looking directly at it I shall never read it again or ever recommend it to anyone else.