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A review by porgyreads
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
4.25
It has taken me at least 4 days to try and gather my thoughts, and I still have no idea where I stand but I know that a re-read is inevitable.
I don’t know if I can say I enjoyed all the way through it but fuck if it isn’t memorable.
I felt like I was being suffocated and even so kept opening the book because I had to know how it ended. TSH is a TOME!! 630+ pages mean by the time I got to the second half of the narrative I was dreading the fallout but I also couldn’t predict where I thought it would go.
I love fallout i do. The mental decline after doing something despicable count me in! But it was also meandering and slow. The rich verbose descriptions of interior and exterior worlds that Richard provides drag more than they enhance in complete contrast to book one. The dichotomy between book 1 and 2 is a subject of contention for me because it’s a purposeful decision of course it is. Different mental states and all. the tedium of pretending to not be a murderous uni student will turn anyone to drink drugs and mindless walks through campus - it will! But it doesn’t make the reading experience less tedious. Even for all of miss Tartts heft regarding structure, pace is compromised in a weird way. So many conversations are happening in the second half, important information is finally being imparted, mysteries are being broken open but the repetitive presence of alcohol and self-pity leaves the reader bitter and agitated. Not too dissimilar from the Greek class themselves. See - genius. See - discomfort.
Regardless, the last 100 pages of the secret history felt like I was having my brain put through a miter saw (in a good way) and so almost ALMOST but not quite make up for this repetitive saga of coping mechanisms (late night conversations, cigarette smoke and substance abuse.)
After finishing it I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that the structure, the plot and the character arcs are all supposed to mimic a Greek tragedy and so for that we have to give miss tartt her props because the tragedy tragedied. I cant decide if I think she’s a genius or not because richard as the narrator is the least reliable narrator ever and so the most compelling parts of the story are held in the conversations we cannot know. Everything we learn about the college, about Julian, about the others, is tainted by richards “longing for the picturesque” and so the longer I’d finished the novel the more I began to question everything.
I think to myself was it just convenient for bunny to be as bigoted as he was because it makes the audience - richards audience, since he has complete control over what we know and don’t know - sympathise with their decision to kill him. I think about how we get pages and pages with bunny’s parents and what two paragraphs a page at max in each book about his own and one is just a description of domestic abuse which makes us go okay fair play to not going home. But you’re telling me that richards parents pay for his schooling yet don’t call him ONCE, don’t contact him at all? That’s suspicious I’m sorry it is
I value the sense that what appeals to people about the novel is this archaic expression of human ideals in a modern world. The Greek class are completely sequestered from reality and do all they can to further this sentiment past Julian’s involvement. Julian gives them the taste of seeing the world with 5th century eyes and they all cling to it so wholeheartedly they try their best to erase all traces of modernity. They don’t watch the news, they don’t read modern books, they dress like Mormons on the lash, they are rarely involved in college life and even when they do go to parties to drink and revel they do everything to an extreme (Starting fights over minor injustices etc etc)
In the first book it’s charming brand of narcissism and then as the second book is underway you realise DT has given us the blueprints for each personal and moral failure of the entire group. TSH could’ve been written by camilla,Henry, Charles or even bunny and that first line the “showy dark crack running down the middle of a life” is different for each of them.
I find it so interesting that there are 3 deaths in the entire book and really the only one that counts or matters to Richard is Henry’s. The novel begins with that whole line of not knowing the gravity of bunny’s death or whatever but Richard tries so hard to convince us that bunny’s death was as inevitable as Henry’s appeared to me in hindsight.
Not just because of their carefully planned removal of Bunny as an obstacle and not a person, but the fact that henrys true obstacle, the reason he feels incapable of living a life he can be content with is himself!!!!!! And he’s not the only one sorry - all of the Greek class are enamoured by their own misery and forge their relationships on the basis of this discomfort and suffering. Henry is the leader because he exemplifies this!
Terrible Henry so smart, so rich, so depressed to the point of rigid numbness. If Richards fatal flaw is the morbid longing for the picturesque which blinds him and leads him astray, Henry’s is the longing to exist outside of time and space, to reach across time and force everyone he knows and loves to go back with him.
One of the many tragedies but arguably the most important to Richard given the epilogue is the tragedy of Henry’s lost brilliance. How alienating and inspiring it was. And the sad thing is without having Henry there to justify his suicide you can still cobble a Henry-like argument for it. The righteous cleansing of the group by turning himself into the post bacchanal pig. In his fifth century mind where honour is more important than grace, his death absolves himself and the rest of the group from their fates (prison sentences) whilst leaving them indebted to him in a way that he could only half accomplish whilst alive.
Brilliant, psychopathic, miserable Henry, who could only see the colours in the world after painting it with blood and THATS who Richard so desperately wanted to be. Lmfaooooo.
I don’t know if I can say I enjoyed all the way through it but fuck if it isn’t memorable.
I felt like I was being suffocated and even so kept opening the book because I had to know how it ended. TSH is a TOME!! 630+ pages mean by the time I got to the second half of the narrative I was dreading the fallout but I also couldn’t predict where I thought it would go.
I love fallout i do. The mental decline after doing something despicable count me in! But it was also meandering and slow. The rich verbose descriptions of interior and exterior worlds that Richard provides drag more than they enhance in complete contrast to book one. The dichotomy between book 1 and 2 is a subject of contention for me because it’s a purposeful decision of course it is. Different mental states and all. the tedium of pretending to not be a murderous uni student will turn anyone to drink drugs and mindless walks through campus - it will! But it doesn’t make the reading experience less tedious. Even for all of miss Tartts heft regarding structure, pace is compromised in a weird way. So many conversations are happening in the second half, important information is finally being imparted, mysteries are being broken open but the repetitive presence of alcohol and self-pity leaves the reader bitter and agitated. Not too dissimilar from the Greek class themselves. See - genius. See - discomfort.
Regardless, the last 100 pages of the secret history felt like I was having my brain put through a miter saw (in a good way) and so almost ALMOST but not quite make up for this repetitive saga of coping mechanisms (late night conversations, cigarette smoke and substance abuse.)
After finishing it I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that the structure, the plot and the character arcs are all supposed to mimic a Greek tragedy and so for that we have to give miss tartt her props because the tragedy tragedied. I cant decide if I think she’s a genius or not because richard as the narrator is the least reliable narrator ever and so the most compelling parts of the story are held in the conversations we cannot know. Everything we learn about the college, about Julian, about the others, is tainted by richards “longing for the picturesque” and so the longer I’d finished the novel the more I began to question everything.
I value the sense that what appeals to people about the novel is this archaic expression of human ideals in a modern world. The Greek class are completely sequestered from reality and do all they can to further this sentiment past Julian’s involvement. Julian gives them the taste of seeing the world with 5th century eyes and they all cling to it so wholeheartedly they try their best to erase all traces of modernity. They don’t watch the news, they don’t read modern books, they dress like Mormons on the lash, they are rarely involved in college life and even when they do go to parties to drink and revel they do everything to an extreme (Starting fights over minor injustices etc etc)
In the first book it’s charming brand of narcissism and then as the second book is underway you realise DT has given us the blueprints for each personal and moral failure of the entire group. TSH could’ve been written by camilla,Henry, Charles or even bunny and that first line the “showy dark crack running down the middle of a life” is different for each of them.
Not just because of their carefully planned removal of Bunny as an obstacle and not a person, but the fact that henrys true obstacle, the reason he feels incapable of living a life he can be content with is himself!!!!!! And he’s not the only one sorry - all of the Greek class are enamoured by their own misery and forge their relationships on the basis of this discomfort and suffering. Henry is the leader because he exemplifies this!
Terrible Henry so smart, so rich, so depressed to the point of rigid numbness. If Richards fatal flaw is the morbid longing for the picturesque which blinds him and leads him astray, Henry’s is the longing to exist outside of time and space, to reach across time and force everyone he knows and loves to go back with him.
Brilliant, psychopathic, miserable Henry, who could only see the colours in the world after painting it with blood and THATS who Richard so desperately wanted to be. Lmfaooooo.