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The Secret History Paperback – September 11, 1992
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One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
“A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled.” —The New York Times
- Print length576 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateSeptember 11, 1992
- Dimensions5.13 x 0.99 x 8 inches
- ISBN-101400031702
- ISBN-13978-1400031702
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What's it about?
A group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries, but their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path.Amazon editors say...
Almost 30 years after it published, 'The Secret History' is still the standard-bearer for the school thriller.
Vannessa Cronin, Amazon EditorPopular highlight
For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.4,820 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
“We don’t like to admit it,” said Julian, “but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything.4,642 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.1,518 Kindle readers highlighted this
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Powerful . . . Enthralling . . . A ferociously well-paced entertainment." —The New York Times
"An accomplished psychological thriller . . . Absolutely chilling . . . Tartt has a stunning command of the lyrical." —The Village Voice
"A smart, craftsman-like, viscerally compelling novel." —Time
"A thinking-person's thriller . . . Think Lord of the Flies, then The Rules of Attraction. . . . The Secret History combines a bit of both--the unmistakable whiff of evil from William Golding's classic and the mad recklessness of priviledged youth from Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the '80s. . . . As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed." —New York Newsday
"Tartt's voice is unlike that of any of her contemporaries. Her beautiful language, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and intellectual energy make her debut by far the most interesting work yet from her generation." —The Boston Globe
"A long tale of friendship, arrogance, and murder knit together with the finesse that many writers will never have . . . Her writing bewitches us . . . The Secret History is a wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin." —The Philadelphia Inquirer
"The great pleasure of the novel is the wonderful complexity and the remarkable skill with which this first novelist spins the tale. And a gruesome tale it is. . . . A great, dense, disturbing story, wonderfully told." —Cosmopolitan
"The Secret History implicates the reader in a conspiracy which begins in bucolic enchantment and ends exactly where it must--though a less gifted or fearless writer would never have been able to imagine such a rich skein of consequence. Donna Tartt has written a mesmerizing and powerful novel." —Jay McInerney
"Donna Tartt has invested this simple and suspenseful plot with a considerable amount of atmosphere and philosophical significance. . . . She's a very good writer indeed." —The Washington Post Book World
"A glorious achievement . . . The Secret History is a grand read--an artful blend of intelligence, entertainment, and suspense that quickens the pulse." —The Virginian Pilot & Ledger-Star
"Beautifully written, suspenseful from start to finish." —Vogue
"One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace. . . . Immensely entertaining." —Houston Chronicle
"Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer. . . . The cadence of her sentences, the authority with which she shaped 500-plus pages of an erudite page-turner indicate she has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road. . . . The decision to murder has about it the inevitability of classical Greek tragedy." —The Miami Herald
"Donna Tartt has a real shot at becoming her generation's Edgar Allan Poe. . . . The Secret History pulses like a telltale heart on steroids." —Glamour
From the Back Cover
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE SNOW in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. He’d been dead for ten days before they found him, you know. It was one of the biggest manhunts in Vermont history—state troopers, the FBI, even an army helicopter; the college closed, the dye factory in Hampden shut down, people coming from New Hampshire, upstate New York, as far away as Boston.
It is difficult to believe that Henry’s modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events. We hadn’t intended to hide the body where it couldn’t be found. In fact, we hadn’t hidden it at all but had simply left it where it fell in hopes that some luckless passer-by would stumble over it before anyone even noticed he was missing. This was a tale that told itself simply and well: the loose rocks, the body at the bottom of the ravine with a clean break in the neck, and the muddy skidmarks of dug-in heels pointing the way down; a hiking accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, at quiet tears and a small funeral, had it not been for the snow that fell that night; it covered him without a trace, and ten days later, when the thaw finally came, the state troopers and the FBI and the searchers from the town all saw that they had been walking back and forth over his body until the snow above it was packed down like ice.
*
It is difficult to believe that such an uproar took place over an act for which I was partially responsible, even more difficult to believe I could have walked through it—the cameras, the uniforms, the black crowds sprinkled over Mount Cataract like ants in a sugar bowl—without incurring a blink of suspicion. But walking through it all was one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite another, and though once I thought I had left that ravine forever on an April afternoon long ago, now I am not so sure. Now the searchers have departed, and life has grown quiet around me, I have come to realize that while for years I might have imagined myself to be somewhere else, in reality I have been there all the time: up at the top by the muddy wheel-ruts in the new grass, where the sky is dark over the shivering apple blossoms and the first chill of the snow that will fall that night is already in the air.
What are you doing up here? said Bunny, surprised, when he found the four of us waiting for him.
Why, looking for new ferns, said Henry.
And after we stood whispering in the underbrush—one last look at the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses, everybody got everything?—and then started single file through the woods, I took one glance back through the saplings that leapt to close the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first lonely flakes of snow that came drifting through the pines, remember piling gratefully into the car and starting down the road like a family on vacation, with Henry driving clench-jawed through the potholes and the rest of us leaning over the seats and talking like children, though I remember only too well the long terrible night that lay ahead and the long terrible days and nights that followed, I have only to glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the saplings, a picture that will never leave me.
I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.
BOOK I
CHAPTER 1
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.
A moi. L’histoire d’une de mes folies.
My name is Richard Papen. I am twenty-eight years old and I had never seen New England or Hampden College until I was nineteen. I am a Californian by birth and also, I have recently discovered, by nature. The last is something I admit only now, after the fact. Not that it matters.
I grew up in Plano, a small silicon village in the north. No sisters, no brothers. My father ran a gas station and my mother stayed at home until I got older and times got tighter and she went to work, answering phones in the office of one of the big chip factories outside San Jose.
Plano. The word conjures up drive-ins, tract homes, waves of heat rising from the blacktop. My years there created for me an expendable past, disposable as a plastic cup. Which I suppose was a very great gift, in a way. On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colorful past, easily accessible to strangers.
The dazzle of this fictive childhood—full of swimming pools and orange groves and dissolute, charming show-biz parents—has all but eclipsed the drab original. In fact, when I think about my real childhood I am unable to recall much about it at all except a sad jumble of objects: the sneakers I wore year-round; coloring books and comics from the supermarket; little of interest, less of beauty. I was quiet, tall for my age, prone to freckles. I didn’t have many friends but whether this was due to choice or circumstance I do not now know. I did well in school, it seems, but not exceptionally well; I liked to read—Tom Swift, the Tolkien books—but also to watch television, which I did plenty of, lying on the carpet of our empty living room in the long dull afternoons after school.
I honestly can’t remember much else about those years except a certain mood that permeated most of them, a melancholy feeling that I associate with watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights. Sunday was a sad day—early to bed, school the next morning, I was constantly worried my homework was wrong—but as I watched the fireworks go off in the night sky, over the floodlit castles of Disneyland, I was consumed by a more general sense of dread, of imprisonment within the dreary round of school and home: circumstances which, to me at least, presented sound empirical argument for gloom. My father was mean, and our house ugly, and my mother didn’t pay much attention to me; my clothes were cheap and my haircut too short and no one at school seemed to like me that much; and since all this had been true for as long as I could remember, I felt things would doubtless continue in this depressing vein as far as I could foresee. In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.
I suppose it’s not odd, then, that I have trouble reconciling my life to those of my friends, or at least to their lives as I perceive them to be. Charles and Camilla are orphans (how I longed to be an orphan when I was a child!) reared by grandmothers and great-aunts in a house in Virginia: a childhood I like to think about, with horses and rivers and sweet-gum trees. And Francis. His mother, when she had him, was only seventeen—a thin-blooded, capricious girl with red hair and a rich daddy, who ran off with the drummer for Vance Vane and his Musical Swains. She was home in three weeks, and the marriage was annulled in six; and, as Francis is fond of saying, the grandparents brought them up like brother and sister, him and his mother, brought them up in such a magnanimous style that even the gossips were impressed—English nannies and private schools, summers in Switzerland, winters in France. Consider even bluff old Bunny, if you would. Not a childhood of reefer coats and dancing lessons, any more than mine was. But an American childhood. Son of a Clemson football star turned banker. Four brothers, no sisters, in a big noisy house in the suburbs, with sailboats and tennis rackets and golden retrievers; summers on Cape Cod, boarding schools near Boston and tailgate picnics during football season; an upbringing vitally present in Bunny in every respect, from the way he shook your hand to the way he told a joke.
I do not now nor did I ever have anything in common with any of them, nothing except a knowledge of Greek and the year of my life I spent in their company. And if love is a thing held in common, I suppose we had that in common, too, though I realize that might sound odd in light of the story I am about to tell.
How to begin.
Product details
- Publisher : Alfred A Knopf (September 11, 1992)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 576 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1400031702
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400031702
- Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.13 x 0.99 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #40 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #119 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #186 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author
Donna Tartt is an American author who has achieved critical and public acclaim for her novels, which have been published in forty languages. Her first novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992. In 2003 she received the WH Smith Literary Award for her novel, The Little Friend, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch.
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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.
A strange but beautifully written story.
For example, especially as you are starting the book, you will wish you could meet the protagonist's acquaintances in real life. The characters themselves are incredibly interesting, and even more so as there is so much mystery surrounding their enigmatic behavior. You will wish you could take classes the way they did, thinking deep, classical thoughts, a close-knit group sequestered in a garret filled with oriental rugs, roses, "the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and a faint inky scent of camphor." Donna Tartt, not incidentally, is possessed of a wonderful turn of phrase, which is at once precise, seemingly effortless, and (thankfully) never ostentatious. The book offers its readers the vicarious enjoyment of the finer things in life, including peeps into the lives of the American 'upper class.' If you have any background in the classics--philosophy, languages, literature--being privy to Tartt's generous allusions will only further enrich your reading.
The book is not perfect, of course. Its main failing is the weakness of the chain of events that drives the plot. Tartt badly needs the reader to believe that not only did Event A lead inextricably to Event B, but all along down the line to X, Y, and Z. The challenge is so great that of course there are questionable links. If you are someone who needs plot and character actions to be 100% credible, you'll have a hard time with this one. Additionally, as other reviewers have pointed out, the students' steady diet of alcohol, pills, and gross leftovers is unnecessary to the plot, hard to believe, and unpleasant to read about. More to the point, the storyline loses some of its tightness at the college's winter break and more often toward the end of the novel, as Tartt tangents into superfluous events that are either irrelevant or too drawn-out.
This book is worth reading even if you have no one to read it with you, but if at all feasible, have a friend read it as well. The Secret History was a perfect choice for my book club because there are so many topics for possible conversation. They can range from the praise and criticism that I just gave to speculation over the assignment of blame for the crimes committed by the protagonists to suggesting different directions the story could have taken at the end. If you have been missing the experience of really losing yourself in a book, this is the one you should pick up. Enjoy!
Top reviews from other countries
Ya hablando de la lectura la disfrute mucho. Tiene una buena historia y un ritmo que te mantiene enganchado.
The style of writing was unique and charming - and though while it was sometimes laborious to try and get through the descriptions were amazing and captured this sense of both complexity (through the usage of details of the background and surroundings) and simplicity (through the usage of simple, realistic dialogue between characters.)
What succeeded in drawing me into this book was the way it was presented - told through Richard who was fundamentally an outsider of the group even at least slightly until the very end. Throughout the entire book theres this outsider-type of feeling you experience while reading and it shows that Donna Tartt was able to perfectly capture this. The unreliable narrator and the many scenes where things are kept a mystery (Henry and Camilla, etc.) all fit into this as well as they will be something Richard will never know - and in turn, we as the readers will never know.
This book can be read as both something extremely deep: a showcase and satirical telling of aestheticism and elitism, of the dangers of what someone will do to achieve the picturesque. Even the eventual reveal of Charles and Camilla fit this narrative - showing that truly in pursuit of this odd godhood-like life and self that they forgo basic morals. So does Henry and all the members of the group, who all find this odd justification for all the deeds they have done - painting murder as nothing more than a redistribution of matter or worrying about it for entirely selfish reasons.
It can be also read as it's most basic, purest form. Throwing aside the metaphors, symbolisms and all, the basis of the book is really just shitty people doing shitty things. And while despite this being an extremely simple assumption of the book, it is very symbolic as well - showing that despite the way the Greek class views the world, the things they do and the "gods" they metaphorically believes themselves to be - that all of their actions and lives are still just regular, average lives. Where there isn't a divine or holy explanation - where there isn't a romanticized play of the murder but rather just cold harsh truth. They aren't anything special and really, shitty people doing shitty things is what they are.
A while ago I heard of the title of "The Secret History" translated into different languages and in what I think is the Italian translation (?) the title is "The gods party at night". Both titles fit beautifully - the "Secret History" referring to how much of the Greek class's history will remain secret, from the world and Richard and "The gods party at night" refers to how they view themselves and later the bacchanal.
Reviewed in Brazil on March 19, 2024