Scan barcode
A review by storytold
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
5.0
(Reread June 2022) Jesus Christ, what a book. I picked it up again after reading this absolutely batshit article in Esquire about the years Donna Tartt et al. spent at Bennington, after which the fictitious Hampsted is fashioned. Personages there of course also appear here. Autofiction is a topic of interest to me, mostly because I could not conceive of doing what it seems Bennington authors have been in the habit of doing. I've also been reading quite a bit on MFA culture and American fiction; being Canadian it feels a bit beyond me, as we have few MFA programs here and the culture of Canadian literature does not rely on it as American fiction does. Finally I am thinking a lot about narrative voice: what a successful voice achieves, why the best books for me provide the sense—with inconsistencies and other judgments—that the narrator is truly alive, an actual person.
The Secret History is a masterclass in all these things. It is an incredibly gripping book; this time I read its final 500 pages in two sittings on back-to-back days. I stayed up until 3am reading it. I finished it feeling ill. It is unquestionably one of the best books I've read: a loving homage in several directions. It is the nature of any tragedy, arguably most forcibly established by Greek custom, for everyone to end it with their lives ruined. This is paradigmatic tragedy.
Richard's narration is grippingly unreliable. He likens himself to Gatsby when he is, at best, Nick, and his subsequent claims about his character crumble under the scrutiny of this realization. We end the book discussing his break-up from Sophie, who essentially describes him as indistinct. Richard is barely there throughout the book. He is often forgotten, a prop in other people's stories. People fail to notice when he is shot because he is scenery. I'm not educated enough in classics to understand what, if anything, this parallels in that genre, but the Great Gatsby reference came to frame the whole book for me. The narrator is the external camera; he is very little in the story in a palpable way. He is the observer, not the actor.
It is bizarre, because I could consciously identify what I didn't like about this book as I was reading it. It's full of literary references in English and Greek traditions, call outs solely to people as clever as the author. This cleverness is repugnant; it infuses the book; the book would not be what it is if it was not, as it calls out within its own pages, so keenly desperate to be superior. I am never quite sure what to make of it when I finish a book just so miserable, but in this case I just feel that it was successful. Moral ambiguity is easily accepted as factual by the narration, barely interrogated by a narrator who was so barely personally invested in the events that he more or less emerges unscathed. He accepts the fact of the murder as freely as his own guilt when it comes. His anguish is deeply felt within the pages, but he was never in any real danger; even when he was throwing people under the bus, Henry barely thought to mention Richard. None of the other characters ever saw him as more than scenery. Incredible. I have to go outside now for many hours and breathe fresh air.
*
(January 2020) A qualified 5, but my experience reading the first 500 pages of this was so transcendental that it retained the rating. It is better than the Goldfinch in that, despite being paced like thick molasses, it retained an absolute quality throughout. I mentioned to a friend that this is dangerously close to my platonic ideal of fiction and I stand by it. But like the Goldfinch, I finished it able to recognize that it was a fine ending but disappointed in it. Nothing was quite so diabolical or complex as I had hoped. That is the beauty of the unreliable narrator, I think. There was a point where everyone was separated that I found it incredible what she had done. And then it came together again in a slightly bizarre, understated manner, which was possibly the point.
Reading this gave me confidence that writing is worth doing. This is a strange thing to say, but I think I mean that mastery at this level is worth striving for. If it was a perfect book, would I feel discouraged? I devoured this in four days and I will definitely read it again. I'm glad to have started off the year with it.
The Secret History is a masterclass in all these things. It is an incredibly gripping book; this time I read its final 500 pages in two sittings on back-to-back days. I stayed up until 3am reading it. I finished it feeling ill. It is unquestionably one of the best books I've read: a loving homage in several directions. It is the nature of any tragedy, arguably most forcibly established by Greek custom, for everyone to end it with their lives ruined. This is paradigmatic tragedy.
Richard's narration is grippingly unreliable. He likens himself to Gatsby when he is, at best, Nick, and his subsequent claims about his character crumble under the scrutiny of this realization. We end the book discussing his break-up from Sophie, who essentially describes him as indistinct. Richard is barely there throughout the book. He is often forgotten, a prop in other people's stories. People fail to notice when he is shot because he is scenery. I'm not educated enough in classics to understand what, if anything, this parallels in that genre, but the Great Gatsby reference came to frame the whole book for me. The narrator is the external camera; he is very little in the story in a palpable way. He is the observer, not the actor.
It is bizarre, because I could consciously identify what I didn't like about this book as I was reading it. It's full of literary references in English and Greek traditions, call outs solely to people as clever as the author. This cleverness is repugnant; it infuses the book; the book would not be what it is if it was not, as it calls out within its own pages, so keenly desperate to be superior. I am never quite sure what to make of it when I finish a book just so miserable, but in this case I just feel that it was successful. Moral ambiguity is easily accepted as factual by the narration, barely interrogated by a narrator who was so barely personally invested in the events that he more or less emerges unscathed. He accepts the fact of the murder as freely as his own guilt when it comes. His anguish is deeply felt within the pages, but he was never in any real danger; even when he was throwing people under the bus, Henry barely thought to mention Richard. None of the other characters ever saw him as more than scenery. Incredible. I have to go outside now for many hours and breathe fresh air.
*
(January 2020) A qualified 5, but my experience reading the first 500 pages of this was so transcendental that it retained the rating. It is better than the Goldfinch in that, despite being paced like thick molasses, it retained an absolute quality throughout. I mentioned to a friend that this is dangerously close to my platonic ideal of fiction and I stand by it. But like the Goldfinch, I finished it able to recognize that it was a fine ending but disappointed in it. Nothing was quite so diabolical or complex as I had hoped. That is the beauty of the unreliable narrator, I think. There was a point where everyone was separated that I found it incredible what she had done. And then it came together again in a slightly bizarre, understated manner, which was possibly the point.
Reading this gave me confidence that writing is worth doing. This is a strange thing to say, but I think I mean that mastery at this level is worth striving for. If it was a perfect book, would I feel discouraged? I devoured this in four days and I will definitely read it again. I'm glad to have started off the year with it.