Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by immakingt0ast
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
5.0
"The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he's worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep away the will entirely."
That pretty much sums [b:The Secret History|29044|The Secret History|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451554846s/29044.jpg|221359]. A richly detailed and character driven novel about a group of students studying Classic Greek at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. They are they very definition of cultivated, intelligent, and repressed. After studying Ancient Greek for several years, they find themselves obsessed with the idea of attempting a baccanal - an ancient Greek tradition usually involving drunken revelry and wild sexual experimentation - as a chance to escape their straight-laced high society lives.
"'After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great,' he said. 'To escape the cognitive mode of experience, to transcend the accident of one's moment of being.'"
From here, things take a turn for the worse. Things go horribly wrong. And driven to near insanity by the ghosts of what they've done, one by one, they spiral into their own individual forms of madness.
I loved this, but I also hated it. It's compelling and it reads like a classic - elegant and profound. But it is dense, and reads a bit like a 19th century novel and god, the characters are absolutely insufferable. Self-centered, elitist, and borderline sociopathic, all of them. Each of them is utterly mad in their own way, which is further compounded by the events of the story. But while they aren't exactly relateable, they are fascinating, and they each demand sympathy in their own way. Despite hating them, I found myself caring about them, and it's rare that a book has the ability to make me feel about characters the way I would an actual person. An engrossing, masterfully told story - I will definitely be reading [a:Donna Tartt|8719|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1409871301p2/8719.jpg] again the next time I am up for a challenge.
That pretty much sums [b:The Secret History|29044|The Secret History|Donna Tartt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1451554846s/29044.jpg|221359]. A richly detailed and character driven novel about a group of students studying Classic Greek at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. They are they very definition of cultivated, intelligent, and repressed. After studying Ancient Greek for several years, they find themselves obsessed with the idea of attempting a baccanal - an ancient Greek tradition usually involving drunken revelry and wild sexual experimentation - as a chance to escape their straight-laced high society lives.
"'After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great,' he said. 'To escape the cognitive mode of experience, to transcend the accident of one's moment of being.'"
From here, things take a turn for the worse. Things go horribly wrong. And driven to near insanity by the ghosts of what they've done, one by one, they spiral into their own individual forms of madness.
I loved this, but I also hated it. It's compelling and it reads like a classic - elegant and profound. But it is dense, and reads a bit like a 19th century novel and god, the characters are absolutely insufferable. Self-centered, elitist, and borderline sociopathic, all of them.