The Secret History – Donna Tartt

What is your opinion on re-reading? I absolutely love it, I enjoy knowing how something will end. Reading a story in which we know from the first place who is going to die and who did it, is a new experience. I thought it was brilliant, we know where we ended up, the question is how did we get there?

The book in short
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 they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.
I got this information here.

My thoughts
Some people see this book as a mystery which it is not. You find out from the very first page that someone was murdered and who that person is. Most importantly we find out who did it. Therefore it is not a mystery what has happened it’s not for you to find out what’s going to happen in the book so it’s not a mystery not at all. What is mystery is why they did it. What brought them to that decision? What made these people go into those woods at that point in time and kill a person? And then how do they go on after that? how do they cope? it’s more psychological than anything else.

The most important part is why is this the only story the main protagonist will ever be able to tell. It’s a psychological story about young people making absolutely terrible mistakes and how they cope with those decisions.

The characters are easy to dislike but somehow I find them very enjoyable to read. They are pretentious and annoying but I read it for the first time when I was at Uni myself and quite frankly people being pretentious and annoying is a somewhat part of student life. I think that this story shows so much more of how a group of people can suffer trying to be who they feel they should be. That in its core is a universal university student experience. They took it too far of course but it’s not so out of the realm of how people actually are.

The story is obviously very sad but to me, the book itself was fun to read. I read it and I listened to the audiobook as well. I think Donna Tartt’s voice lends itself wonderfully to this story. It paired very nicely and made the story come to life even more for me.

I thought the story was very interesting, and that every single character brought something new to the story. I thought it was a fun read that can be re-read over time as it can show you the characters in a different light when you view it with a different lens. Overall I recommend this book if you enjoy psychological murder stories with a sprinkle of dark academia.