Review by lillfarbrorn - The Secret History

lillfarbrorn 's review for:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

4.0

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I really did enjoy reading this book, the characters and the story. However, enjoying the characters does not mean liking them as people. Because they are most definitely not meant to be likeable people. Enjoyable? Yes. Likeable? No.

They are all, in some way or another and some more than others, people who you wouldn’t want to be around in real life. Each character has at least one undesirable trait, and they are all morally gray if not explicitly bad people. However, I still found them enjoyable, which I believe is made possible by the fact that they are clearly not meant to be likeable as human beings.

I also found it very interesting to read about and analyze Richard’s perspective of everyone else, and compare it to my understanding of them (although using only Richards observations).

The writing was good, as one would expect from a writer such as Donna Tartt, although a little difficult at some points which I believe is because I am not a native English speaker. However, even though some parts were more difficult than others, they were never to the extent of being too much or unintelligible.

I’ve put off reading this book for quite some time, but I’m very glad I got to reading it. It’s a great story, and a very interesting one.

Content Warnings