My not-so Secret Opinion on The Secret History

    Hello everyone! I hope Agora was really fun for all of you! I used some of my downtime to get a little more reading done, and of course, it had to be more Donna Tartt! As I previously mentioned in one of my last posts, The Secret History is one of Donna Tartt’s most popular novels. When I finished If We Were Villains a while back, someone recommended I also read The Secret History, and I finally managed to snag a copy a couple of weeks ago! Just to warn you all, this is not going to go into only The Secret History, as I’ll be mentioning If We Were Villains and The Goldfinch as well. 

In The Secret History, we follow 6 Hampden College students in Vermont as they make their way through a prestigious Greek program at their school. Their teacher, Julian Morrow, is quite unusual and usually only accepts five students, but the protagonist, Richard Papen, manages to slip past the rule. We follow the 6 characters throughout their time at the college, with the book set in Richard’s point of view. Quite quickly, the reader is immediately bombarded with their flaws, and one of their members is killed by the rest of the group out of fear. However, the action causes the group’s closeness to deteriorate, and they all don’t quite cope in the best ways. Richard is the only one to graduate, and the whole story is his reflection on these events.

I really enjoy Donna Tartt’s writing style, and this was brought home in The Secret History. Her descriptive style is really easy to read and makes the longer page count worth it (I mean how do you think I got through The Goldfinch??). Although The Secret History is drastically shorter, it still has a similar charm in the writing style overall. In both novels, we get the perspective of the protagonist after the events of their life have played out, and they are just reflecting on everything that’s happened. Coincidentally, this also happens in If We Were Villains (which is written by a different author, but I thought it was interesting!). Additionally, I thought the plot was SO interesting, and put together is a pretty solid novel. However, I did have one gripe specifically. The characters! I can imagine writing six different characters would be difficult, and this was Tartt’s first novel, but it felt like there wasn’t enough room for all of them. In particular, I thought Charles and Francis were characters who lacked a lot of personality or description overall. Francis’ main personality trait, especially towards the beginning, was the fact he was gay and more effeminate compared to the other members of the group. I think that Tartt could have worked upon this more, as it felt half-baked compared to characters like Bunny or Henry, but as I stated before, this was her first novel and it tries to fit in 6 different characters' perspectives, including even more later. Camilla, the only girl in the group, continues on with a lack of overall personality. The readers only see how pretty she is, and not a ton about her personality. This is maybe excusable by Richard’s crush on her, but I feel like he should be able to talk about her character traits in addition to her beauty. Besides this, I didn’t have too many other dislikes, and the ones I had were pretty minor. 

Overall, I did enjoy reading The Secret History! I would advise anyone reading to look at some content warnings before beginning, just because it can get quite dark but if you’ve read either The Goldfinch or If We Were Villains I would also look at this novel as well! This probably marks the end of my Donna Tartt reading craze (or at least writing about the novels on this blog), but I really would encourage anyone who is looking for something new to at least try reading a novel by Donna Tartt. Thanks for reading!

- Nona R.