The start of The Secret History was a surprise.     We learn that the narrator (Richard Pappin) and his friends committed a murder of their friend.   The next 540+ pages explains the events that led up to the event, then what happened afterwards.

The novel focuses on five college friends who are in a classics program at a smaller institution in the northeast.    They are in an immersive, small-group program of Greek language and literature and the author intersperses classical quotes and references throughout the story.  The narrator is a lonely outsider who befriends a close-knit group of students.   At first they seem like normal people, but over the span of the book we find they are eccentric, self-centered, shallow, full of secrets, and not all that likeable.

Donna Tartt goes to great lengths to provide detailed character studies, revealed through the narrator who reports on their words and actions over a period of two years at the College.   As the story progresses we become more discouraged with their behavior – drugs, alcohol, lying, theft, mistrust,  betrayal, and finally violence.   There is no good reason for the five to waste their youths and life’s opportunities, but they become caught up in their own “secret histories” and cannot see the way clear to restart their lives.   Richard becomes ensnared too and is partly responsible for the murder, but he hangs on to shreds of decency and works towards redemption at the end of the story.

The book is a psychological thriller with a backwards plot, but a great deal of the book is polite dialogue, small social events, and small revelations.   The story could have been told in half the time, but perhaps that is its strength – a slow, methodical, and steady march to the inevitable end.

This was Donna Tartt’s first novel, one that took her 8 years to write.   It is a long and slow read, but it is also a compelling story, one I would never read again, but one that I was glad to have finished.

A recommended book (although I surprise myself with this…) – 4.5 out of 5.0 stars4.5

An excerpt (read by the author):