The Secret History: Book Analysis and Review
- Julie Allan
- May 20, 2024
- 8 min read
A modern Greek tragedy
Review and Illustrations by Julie Allan
I thought it only fitting that I would start my book reviews page with a post on the infamous “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt. As a big fan of the classics myself, this book came to me with the highest recommendations – albeit given by people on the internet, something one must always be cautious of. But still, after reading countless recounts on how amazing the book was, and seeing how it has shaped the literary world since its release, I went for it with the highest expectations.
Now, before I say anything else, I would like to start by saying I absolutely loved the book. I enjoyed the story and have many many praises to give, many of which I will be mentioning here shortly. However, I have to say, the book did not precisely meet the expectations set by what I’d read and what I’ve seen to be the result of its influence. Rather it sent me in a spiral. After a lot of thought, watching many reviews, interviews, and reading on the subject I have a lot to say about it.
What follows is my analysis and review, divided into the Five major topics I would like to touch upon regarding the book.
The story
The book starts with the admittance of a crime. The main character, Richard, to whom we are introduced in the first few pages, tells the reader that he took part in a murder. Not only that, but he reveals to the reader who was murdered, and all the people involved in the crime. A bold and strong start if I may say so. Although most crime and mystery novels make you wait until the very last second to reveal that information we are introduced to it upfront. Of course this just works to spark more curiosity on the reader; Why? How? When?
The initial revelation of such critical information serves to involve the reader in the same way as if someone said “Psst…I have a secret, let me tell it to you, and we’ll see how long
it takes for everyone else to figure it out together.” Once the reader feels they are privy to crucial information they simply must know more.
We then go on to hear the main character narrate the events that transpired in his college years in Vermont. Richard, as a frustrated twenty-year old from California moves up North to study at Hampden, an elite University. There he meets a group of students; rich, reclusive, intellectuals. He manages to weave his way into this incredibly selective classics class. He then starts to get close to the other five students, Henry, Camilla, Charles, Francis and Bunny. This relationship then leads to a chain of events in which someone gets murdered. Then someone gets murdered again.
The Author
Part of the attraction people have felt towards this book stems from its author. A bit like a character in one of her books, Donna Tartt is an enigmatic scholar. She studied in an elite University in New England and was part of a small circle of students who studied writing. There is also this sort of interest that is sparked in her readers by the fact that she only releases a book every decade. The image of a tortured, obsessive scholar writing by candlelight is brought about when thinking about her process of creation. When The Secret History came out, her debut novel, it was an instant success. However it was far from feeling so to her, as it was a nine year labor to write it. Then her following book, the Goldfinch, came out about a decade later.
When asked what first sparked the idea for this novel, she responded with:
“I had been studying Greek and, you know, there is tremendous suspense in the Iliad, and you know everything that’s going to happen in the first six lines. And this was just a very interesting question to me; how do you create suspense from knowing what we already know.“
Later in the same interview she also completed that
“All my favorite novels have murder in it. (...) Maybe when I’m 40 and I’ve lived a little longer in the world I’ll be able to write a book about love. As of now I don’t know enough about that. (...) Those are the two great things; Love and Death.”
I believe these small glimpses of who she is stand on its own to explain what intrigues her readers so in regards to the persona created around the author. That is the first aspect that makes her novels immediate sensations; not only the writing, but the intriguing writer.
Fatal Flaws
As I started the book, the expectation I had was of course for a group of flawed characters( as any good character will be). But from the way people talked, especially about Henry Winter, I expected the characters to have some charisma or quality. Truly all of them are intriguing and complex as well as flawed and admirable. And if you ask me, sociopaths. But that is beyond the point. Although they are all, unquestionably, terrible people. The interesting thing is to see Richard try and prove otherwise. He claims:
“Just for the record, I do not consider myself an evil person (though how like a killer that makes me sound!). Whenever I read about murders in the news I am struck by the dogged, almost touching assurance with which interstate stranglers, needle-happy pediatricians, the depraved and guilty of all descriptions fail to recognize the evil in themselves; feel compelled, even to assert a kind of spurious decency. “Basically I am a very good person.” This from the latest serial killer—destined for the chair, they say—who, with an incarnadine axe, recently dispatched half a dozen registered nurses in Texas. I have followed his case with interest in the papers.”
They are all unequivocally evil, and just plain bad people. Nothing like the romanticized versions of the characters I had read online. As you are finishing the book you are left wondering how much of it is faithful to reality as you read Richard’s own words:
“It has always been hard for me to talk about Julian without romanticizing him. In many ways, I loved him the most of all; and it is with him that I am most tempted to embroider, to flatter, to basically reinvent. I think that is because Julian himself was constantly in the process of reinventing the people and events around him, conferring kindness, or wisdom, or bravery, or charm, on actions which contained nothing of the sort. It was one of the reasons I loved him: for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be.”
We question how Richard has romanticized or “embroidered” his descriptions of every character in this story to fit his ideals. Now, from the first page, we are told this narrator is a murderer. A remorseless murderer at that. Yet somehow we trust him throughout the story, to tell us just what the other people are like.
I think the reason The Secret History has remained so influential and relevant for so long is because its readers are just like Richard in that sense. They are willfully blind, hoping to feel exactly what Richard felt when he said “it was as if the characters in a favorite painting, absorbed in their own concerns, had looked up out of the canvas and spoken to me”. The readers, these people who have come to observe the dark academia lifestyle, are wishing to be accepted, wishing to see life through the same romanticized lenses that Richard saw. Which is, in a general sense, not to say that is a bad thing. But when it comes to a group of people who are murderous, constantly drunk, or under the influence of drugs, and well… let’s just say, have other terrible characteristics I would say this isn’t the best of aspirations.
As I was doing research on the topic I came across a video review on youtube where the author was recounting their initial experience of reading the book. They said:
“This is pretentious, but I am magnetized to it anyway. I want to be in on the joke. I want to be written about in the way that this book’s narrator, Richard, writes about the five students at the center of his fixations.“
In reading a book like this one tends to find a morbid beauty in it. As what Richard claims as his fatal flaw to have “a morbid longing for the picturesque''. This leads people to distort reality into a level of Detachment.
Detached and distorted I believe are the key words in this novel.
Repercussions
In what I expected to find a good crime novel in an academic setting, I found an intriguing and disturbing story that led me to question the environment of “academics”. Led me to understand what the origins of this so-called “Dark Academia” aesthetic I’ve seen so often around the internet really was.
The Dark Academia aesthetic came about as a direct result of this book. It values education and intellect, knowledge, Literature, and the classics. It has as a goal to become this Hellenistic version of self, the idealized self in beauty, style and knowledge. It is to wear dark clothing and write with ink pens, to feel superior and obsessively study ancient texts. A clear resemblance to the characters in this book.
It is not for me to say that all people who followed the dark academia aesthetic are obnoxious and pretentious. Or that they seek education only to find something they can drown themselves in, escape reality. Not all people who dress in long coats and carry around their own copy of the Iliad, and the odyssey are elitist and have a superiority complex. I think it is actually the very contrary, and I think this Dark Academic movement is great to encourage more people to explore their intellectual interests and grow in knowledge.
But this book created an issue that was supposed to be villainized in the story that has now been romanticized; an erroneous romanticization of elitism and a feeling of superiority. It's like the opposite effect expected by the “moral” of the story.
Richard was not a good person, but rather he uses beautiful language to describe something terrible and shows no remorse for it.
And they all lived sadly ever after
(spoiler warning)
In the end the story is a tragedy. In the end they are all alone, dead, depressed. In the end, even after death, it is clear there is no happiness. All lovers are torn apart, the beauty is gone and all that is left behind is a tragic memory of what once was and what might have been.
There was once a man who murdered someone; someone dear to him at that. Him and a group of his friends pushed him off a cliff. Arms flapping his voice wailing as distance grew and then a sudden silence. Afterwards, they went on to live their lives sad, and alone. What a tragedy.
As much as Richard claims they found the idea of it all appealing throughout the book, made evident in his line:
The business had upset him, that I knew, but I also knew that there was something about the operatic sweep of the search which could not fail to appeal to him and that he was pleased, however obscurely, with the aesthetics of the thing.
It was made clear by the ending, that this ideal was fleeting and not real. Perhaps my favorite part about this story was in fact the ending. It solidified the idea that this “Idealization of self”, this obsessiveness demonstrated by the characters, led only to tragedy. The epilogue serves to show that this life was unfulfilling. Those who survived were estranged, alone, and sad. No matter how much beauty we find in the ideals they built for themselves in college, it all ended in dull loneliness.
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