Book Review: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
The Secret History by Donna Tartt, the book that started the Dark Academia aesthetic, studying Homer and drinking coffee while staying up the whole night contemplating murder and morality. I don’t think I can put into words the sense of overwhelm and ‘catharsis’ this book made me feel. I’ll keep on wailing dramatically about the fact that I’m not a part of an elitist circle of young self-styled scholars who quote the classics over dirty Martinis and toast to living forever and are driven to commit various acts of evil as a result of getting too absorbed in their Greek assignments in the real tragedy here.
The story revolves around a group of rich and sophisticated, classic major-college students who get caught up in vicious crimes. Richard Papen, the narrator of the book is a new addition to the group after us deep pang of loneliness and dejection.
The group had tension, secrets, lies and deceit, but the tension was of minds meeting, differing interests, not the tension of a world about to become terribly complicated, ending in tragedy, six souls forfeit. A world where murder, lies, and treachery were nothing but a currency they used to pay for their whole lives.
Written so skillfully and engagingly, Tartt led me deftly from page to page, chapter to chapter, through a messy, mad tumult of memories. The flow is hypnotic and Tartt has been able to sweep the reader into a reverie about morality, beauty, and terror, with a climax that is tragic but beautiful.
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
The Secret History is a romanticizing the dream of a doomed youth that cared nothing for sense of self-preservation. The dynamics between the characters surpass the wildest definitions of dysfunctional, from darlings to vipers — all caught in a twisted pantomime of ambition and self-important and their abominable fulfillment.
Richard chronicles his own tale, starting off with Bunny’s murder and his involvement in it — this admission is so unornamented and unmarried with grief or regret, as its to be studied without any emotion. Then onwards, he started picking at his memories with a sort of cultivated assuredness you should know better than to follow into the dark.
For me, this book was the one that started my fascination and obsession with the aesthetic, classic-studying-college-student life, which I still hope to achieve (minus the murders of course). It grasped at my attention, kept me up and made me sleep deprived, but at the end, it provided me with a feeling that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
