The Secret History: A Read with Jenna Pick

by Donna Tartt

[clementine]

I was prepared to give this 5 stars up until around page 500. It's not exactly that it lagged - with The Little Friend, I just kind of wanted it to be over by that point, but I didn't quite feel that way with The Secret History. I just didn't think it needed to keep going. The ending was incredibly anticlimactic: everything post-Bunny murder just was not as thrilling as the rest of the novel, I suppose by necessity. And this one ran into the same issue as The Goldfinch for me: the final pages just didn't need to be included. I did not need to know where each character ended up, you know? It's such a bummer of a way to conclude a book like this.

However, obviously, I still liked it. I liked that it was a mystery, but not in the regular sense. You know the outcome from the beginning; it's more a matter of "How did it get to that place?", and, of course "Will they get caught?" which drive the narrative. And knowing what happens keeps the tension dialled up to the extreme - I don't know that I'd call this book a thriller, but it's almost as thrilling as one despite its relatively slow pace. Tartt dropped so many tantalizing clues and hints that made me want to keep reading. This one was a page-turner in a way her other books weren't, to me, and I read it a lot faster as a result.

As usual, I loved her writing: lush, descriptive, and enviable overall. I liked the characters, too, although I suppose "liked" is the wrong word since none of them were particularly likeable. (Why do I like unlikeable characters so much?!) The characters do require a bit of suspension of disbelief - I'm okay to believe that liberal arts students in their early twenties are very pretentious, but these characters were extremely pretentious (insufferable, even) and on top of that talked like they were 1900s British uppercrust. But I suppose the remarkability of their pretention (and their belief in it) is what made all the events possible.

I've had issues with all of Donna Tartt's books but I've still rated them all four stars because I enjoy them despite their flaws. I'll probably pick up whatever she puts out next, though that will most likely be the better part of a decade from now.