“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I’ve never experienced anything like this book in my entire life. Reading this book was so surreal, so hypnotic; it felt like a fever dream. I was caught in its enthralling web, so drawn to the characters and the world around them. After reading this book, I caught a bad case of book hangover: an endless hole you feel after completing a masterpiece, the sadness of knowing you’ll never be able to experience it for the first time again. All night, I’ve tossed and turned, thinking about this absolute masterpiece of a book.
The Secret History is quite an age-old book. Published in 1992, it is renowned as a modern classic today–and, very rightfully so. It is also a deceptively long book. Despite the thin cord, the book amounts to over 200,000 words. The book isn’t too much of an easy read, either; theres untranslated Greek, French, and Italian thrown in the mix, with long references to Classic history as well. But as dense as this book is, the more it draws you toward the characters, the more it leads you to turn the pages.
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The novel follows Richard Papen as he narrates his experiences in a rich and somewhat prestigious college in New England. He shares with us his “morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs”, which prompts him to grow interested in the small, almost cult-like group of classics students; those who have been handpicked by their charming classics professor. When Richard is accepted into this exclusive group after a lucky encounter with the students, he falls into a spiral of obsession with their ways. Under the instruction (or subtle encouragement) of their Professor, they find themselves slipping into a desire to embrace this “picturesque”–to drop completely what makes them imperfect, be it emotions or morals–and into the bounds of evil.
The characters in this book are all morally grey and are, generally, just horrible people. They are egocentric, selfish, and somewhat pretentious at times. But Tartt drew me into a lull with her absolutely cerebral and stunning prose. Through Richard’s narrative, so much about the characters felt malleable, like you could put it into your own perspective. There was so much suspense, so much paranoia. As the characters operated in their own ways, some more controlling than others, I felt as if I was in clockwork–everyone does their own part, and everything comes together, so mesmerizingly, to make it tick.
“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless. It is not a quality of intelligence that one encounters frequently these days. But though I can digress with the best of them, I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
What can I say about this book, other than the fact that I’ll be thinking about it for some time? They say the reader lives a thousand lives–I’ll be damned if I have to live through such a story again.
~5 stars
