the secret history - book review

my thoughts on: the secret history - donna tartt (5☆)

my synopsis: richard papen joins an exclusive greek class with five other students (henry, bunny, camilla, charles, and francis). the story is split into two parts: the first recounts how this group is responsible for bunny’s death, the second follows their collective descent into madness because of their crime.

i don’t specifically know what the criteria is for a psychopath, but i do know henry wouldn’t be far off from it. where i find ancient greek literature interesting, he was too curious and found it … inappropriately inspiring. curiosity may have killed the cat, but it made henry kill a piglet and bathe in its blood. what a weirdo (understatement of the century).

i can solidly say this book lives up to the hype. i read ‘babel’ and ‘if we were villains’ before this and considering they all share a similar storyline (group of college kids studying lowkey pretentious topics of interest have an unnaturally close involvement with murder which naturally precipitates moral chaos), i’m not surprised i enjoyed this book too.

the pace reflects well the general lawlessness that ensues, the relationships between the characters is carefully balanced between sentimental and unnerving, and the story explores interesting themes such as superficial identities, manipulation vs. love, and (of course) fatal flaws.

i always find something intriguing about unreliable narrators. richard papen is a great example. some writing that stuck with me is how his conflict with his conscience was brutally exposed in the second half. given the almost apathetic way he discussed the repercussions of bunny’s death, i think this structure conveyed well that he and the others didn’t understand the severity of their actions up until they saw its effects on bunny’s father.

while camilla inspired a lot of lines that the hopeless romantic in me found touching, i didn’t find her relationship with richard (or henry) to be one based in mutual understanding, or affection, or anything close to love. i’m not even going to talk about her and charles.

the ending was unsurprisingly insane. a fitting conclusion. beauty is terror indeed.