The Secret History

The moment I know I’ll love a book is when I’m going about my everyday life and, suddenly, tiny occurrences pleasantly jerk my mind back to the book’s world. It’s been days since I finished Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) and I still find myself constantly daydreaming about this exquisite novel. The curious thing is that I didn’t love The Secret History the way I love most books I read. I didn’t sit in bed overnight reading just to reach the end and expecting a big twist or climax (which, to my pleasant surprise, it had), only to be momentarily relieved or disappointed before closing the book and returning to reality. As many readers have admitted before me, what kept me engrossed in this book was not what was going to happen, but how it would happen. Inexplicably, I wanted to live and breathe in that world, to stay in it for as long as possible and cling to every word and thought as much as I could. For that reason, I devoured it slowly—about three weeks passed until I’d read the book from start to finish. And still I can’t explain the emptiness after finishing, or the feeling that it’ll be hard to find a book that moves me in quite the same way this one did.The book centers on the recollections of Richard Papen regarding his dark experiences at the fictional Hampden College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Richard, a self-conscious and naïve student from a blue-collar background in Plano, California, arrives at Hampden with merely a suitcase and a desire to escape his miserable childhood home. At Hampden, Richard is, after some time and effort, accepted into the highly exclusive Classics major under the patriarchal and eccentric Professor Julian Morrow. Through the small group’s weekly meetings reminiscent of a secret society (there are merely 6 students in the major), he falls in with the cluster of seemingly unapproachable, picturesque scholars whose souls seem to have stepped out of an ancient Greek play. There’s group leader Henry Winter, tall and brooding, a clever linguist always sporting a suit. The others are red-haired and elegant Francis Abernathy, spritely and enigmatic twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, and jovial, freeloading Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran. To fit in, Richard invents a backstory packed with Californian wealth, despite being the only one without family connections or a stable financial background.While submersed in the intellectual beauty of his studies and peers, combined with their frequent visits to Francis’ family’s empty, historic, relic-filled country house, Richard seems to be living a Classic dream come true. But after a bizarre, Dionysian bacchanal (basically a drug-induced, spiritual orgy in the woods) ends in both an accidental and, eventually, a premeditated murder, Richard begins to realize that his childish and somewhat shallow infatuation with the group may not be enough for him to swallow their treasure chest of dark secrets.After reading merely the first sentence, we are told (what we believe to be) the book’s climax. But what we don’t know is why or how their lives will fall apart, one by one, as if on the Devil’s very own hit list, as a result of a single moment in time. Ultimately, Richard’s superficial obsession to fit in, his “morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs,” proves to be not only his fatal flaw, as he himself admits, but his doorway into a dark, living, breathing world of heartache, melancholy, and never-ending nightmares.I’ll start by saying that I am by no means proficient in or even familiar with the Classics. I’m aware of the basics, of the idea of a “fatal flaw” and such, but not enough to feel comfortable writing about them with confidence. Therefore, for those of you debating whether to read this book because of this element, I can tell you now—the substance is not in this aspect, but in the character development and plot. The book does in many ways parallel a Greek tragedy, and those who are familiar with Classics will likely have an enhanced reading experience. However, by no means does it exclude readers without this background. The emphasis is strongly on the deterioration of a group of friends, not on Greek philosophy.Now, most critics of the book are quick to attack its seemingly pretentious aura, claiming that real 90’s college students would never talk like these do (“For a few minutes—goodness, how confusing this was—I thought of digging a grave but then I realized it would be madness” is an actual quote from a student) dress in European suits, or smoke 500 cigarette packs a day while they throw back expensive whiskey like its water. They’d never skip a college party of free-flowing beer, fluorescent lights, and sticky floors to sit in a country house and practice the box step, or discuss “whether Hesiod’s primordial Chaos was simply empty space or chaos in the sense of the modern world” while they play cards. But in a sense, I beg to differ. Yes, these characters can be slightly exaggerated, mostly in the first half of the book, which details their frequent gatherings and esoteric conversations (towards the end they notably start speaking in more colloquial terms). Yes, they can be irritating, despicable, and downright disturbing at times. But to be honest, this never bothered me as I was reading—in fact, it made the book even more fascinating. If you can’t handle some deliciously evil characters that pose as charming members of society, you probably won’t like many books out there. I see this pompousness as merely a way of cynically showing us that these students, with superficially beautiful minds and faces, with a seemingly supreme moral compass, are not only flawed and human, but often much worse than that. The premature deification of the group only serves to make their fall from grace that much more powerful, sad, and disquieting.Another point of contention regarding the novel is its tendency to ramble, to spend precious time illustrating minute details of the characters’ personalities, surroundings, thoughts, etc. Once again, this is true to a certain extent. This book is not written as an action novel or crime thriller, where everything is based on people running around solving things or shooting guns. If you can’t stand description and only want action, this book may not be for you. But to me, Tartt creates a world that’s tangible, where every description explains things so poignantly that you often feel you couldn’t have worded it better yourself. Yes, there are many words, but every word is there for a reason if you stop to examine it. And Tartt’s talent shines not only in her prose, but in her timing and in her ability to develop tension such that each secret revealed seems like a bomb dropped, no matter how small. It’s is the juxtaposition of the realistic ambiance and the perfectly timed reveals that, for me, makes The Secret History so moving and so difficult to leave. As a reader, you feel Richard’s nostalgia the way you recall your own sharp childhood memories that you long to go back to, and the way you often stop to consider the other paths that your life could’ve taken if only things had been different.I rarely experience emotions this strong when reading any book, and as much as I’d like to I can’t put my finger on what exactly about this book did it for me—and in that same way, I can’t guarantee the same for every reader. But I can say that if you’re looking for an intellectual, modern classic, a haunting psychological thriller, a mix between Lord of the Flies, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Dead Poets Society, or simply a book that will linger in your mind as you lay in bed each night — it’s sitting right in front of you.

I’ve had The Secret History in my TBR pile for…well, a long time now. But in the last two weeks, three separate students – with no connection between them – all brought up the book to me. And while I’m assuming that it has to do with BookTok (a thing that I know exists but which my age exempts me from having to learn about it), the fact that three different high schoolers all independently came up to me to talk about a thirty-year old book…well, it moved the book up to the top of my stack. So, having read it, I can certainly imagine a lot of why it’s appealing to a high school and/or college audience (beyond it being part of the “dark academia” trend right now)…but honestly, I have been thinking since I finished it about how I feel about the book, and I think I’ve yet to entirely decide.In its broadest strokes, The Secret History is about a young man named Richard Papen, who wants little more than to get out of his small town and away from his humble, working-class background. That’s how he ends up at Hampden College, a small liberal arts college in Vermont, where he finds himself drawn to an elite, exclusive, and small group of classics students – an invitation-only class focused on Greek translation but also a wider appreciation of classic literature and studies. Of course, that all seems fine, but it’s all colored a bit by the prologue, which informs us about the search for the body of one of the class’s members – killed by his classmates.To some degree, that’s really the whole plot of The Secret History, which spends about half of its length building up to that murder, and the rest of the book watching as the aftermath unfolds. There are some other key events here and there, but the major one takes place off-stage entirely and the other effectively serves as the book’s climax. Instead, this is a coming-of-age book of sorts, about a young man who finds an odd batch of kindred spirits and a chance to reinvent himself, and finds himself swept up in a group without connections to the larger community and with a deep sense of superiority about themselves, their knowledge, and their connections.Because make no mistake, these are upper-class students – well, apart from Richard, who is taking this chance to hide his working-class background and pretend that he’s part of their group. And the snobbery, the disdain, the self-righteousness and superiority of these characters…it’s a lot, and that’s before they commit a murder which often seems to be viewed almost entirely as an inconvenience for them as anything – a nuisance, rather than an act of evil.And this is where I struggle with the book. My initial reaction, as I read the book, was to view it much as I do the book The Great Gatsby – that it is a book about awful people, written from the point of view of one who’s almost as awful as the rest, but blissfully unaware of it. But as The Secret History goes on (and on – this is not a short book, and its prose and discussions can be longwinded at times), I struggled with that interpretation. Oh, there’s definitely at least one class member who we’re supposed to feel uneasy about…but more than anything, this book seems to pity these students, and never really pushes back against their ignorance or egos or snobbery. Then again, my English teacher brain chimes in, Nick Carraway doesn’t either, and you like that book just fine.It probably complicates my feelings on The Secret History to see it through the eyes of my students, too, because I know younger me would feel differently about these students, and I know some of them can see the great side of this – the sense of being better than the idiots you’re so often surrounded by, the sense of finding your peers and being able to have “real” conversations about things that matter, the desire to get to find yourself and to become something “intellectual.” And I can see it all being appealing, to where the book can be described as “incredibly sad” but not for the murder itself.But to see all of that and to not see the self-deceptions at the heart of The Secret History, I think, is to misread the book, because I think Tartt has to be viewing them through a lens of narcissism and self-involvement…because only that could justify how thinly drawn some of these characters are, and how ultimately thin the whole book is. For all of the length of The Secret History, I’m not sure it wears that weight well; by the time Tartt got to The Goldfinch, she was much better about her pacing and her story. (I do think that some – not all, but definitely some – of my issues with The Secret History come from it being a first novel.) Here, there are about three beats to hit, and the rest is sort of living in this world with these characters, which would be fine, I suppose, if there was all that much to them. I can live with them being awful people (see Gatsby, above)…but to be so empty, apart from Bunny and Henry? That’s a more disappointing flaw, even if it’s one that took me a bit into the book to realize.For all of that, though, I can’t deny losing myself in The Secret History‘s pages for hours at a time. I can’t really argue the tragic air that hangs over the back half of the book, or the way the book can nail the way that isolation from the “normal” world can cloud your judgment, or how repression and guilt can eat away at you. I can’t push back against the way it captures the feel of finding your “thing” at college and feeling like you’re with your peers and the world is ahead of you. Is the book too long? Is it pretentious at times (fittingly, given its characters and milieu)? Are the characters less developed than they seem, ultimately feeling more like pencil sketches rather than fully developed portraits? Yes, yes, and yes. But for all those flaws, The Secret History still kind of worked on me, and I can understand all too well why it would hit perfectly for a high school/college audience – and how for me, all I can feel is the same amused irritation we all have when dealing with younger people who just don’t quite know better yet.

I can’t believe I’d never read nor even heard of this book until now. The writing is beautiful, the imagery so detailed, and the characters meticulously crafted. The story is relatable, yet dark and horrifying. The parallels between ancient cultures and the struggles of the modern group are so well created. It’s a longer read, but well worth the investment. I’m going to miss picking it back up.