The Secret History by Donna Tartt

"... Sometimes when I saw him at a distance ... I forgave him a hundred times over... Unfortunately, these were often the moments when he chose to attack ... that I would vow not to forget it, and never to forgive him again. I broke that promise many times... all petty things, really, irritants - too minor, it would seem ... The danger he presented was, after all, not immediate but slow and simmering... hundreds of small, unavenged humiliations which had been rising in me for months..." - excerpt from The Secret History

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is the story of of college students who end up killing their "friend". The first part is the story of how Richard moved to a New England college and found himself trying to fit into the Greek class, full of mysterious, rich college kids. As he befriends them and joins the class he ends up getting mixed into all the trouble and murder of Bunny, the first part is the story that leads to the death. The second part of the book is after the death and how each of them live on. 

This book was lent to me by someone else, henceforth the reason why it is so different to the usual books that I actually read. This book is a murder mystery. While I was quite entranced while reading this book, I didn't find it a really good novel. If you have read any of my other posts you would have realised that I like books that are more passive books, with happy endings. This book from the first page had a murder  (this didn't detract from the book, talked about later) and from then on even more deaths or attempted deaths. The end is quite mysterious and it definitely ends in a very pessimistic mood. Another reason for my contempt in the book is the fact that I couldn't empathise with any of the character's extreme personalities, and this is something I find really important. (I will talk about this later on this post.)

Donna Tartt had a hard task on her hands when she decided to write this book. The ideas found in this book are quite deep even if they weren't explored in empathetical manner. The book focuses on the psychological aspects of criminals. Part 1 explores the malleable minds of young adults and the effects of peer pressure and mixing in with the wrong crowd. As Richard himself says, he doesn't and never saw himself as the bad guy, and yet he committed a murder. Charles blames Henry for persuading him to do something so bad. The first part is really on what leads someone to kill someone. As the quote at the start mentions it, Bunny was never a horrible person and it seems hard to explain to someone why they hated him so much to kill him, it was due to his never ending irritant and irrational attitude that led to his death. That is as much as I could extract from the first part and I will not try any further because I hope I never understand much more of a criminal's mind. The second part of the book focuses on the emotional downturn and guilt that plays in the minds of murderess. None of the students ever lead happy lives, they were always tainted by thoughts of what they had done. Their horrible secret past left a scar on their memories. It was especially guilt of doing something so bad that destroyed them. They could not do anything without thinking about that night. 

Now, as I mentioned at the start the murder was mentioned at the first page. It is almost that the climax was set as the introduction. While, this sounds ludicrous that such an acclaimed writer could have started a book in such an unconventional way I actually found this made the story even more tense. The fact that I knew Bunny was killed made me feel tense throughout the whole of part one as I awaited his death to occur again. This made me read even faster so that I could reach the actual killing of Bunny.

One of the flaws that made me dislike this book was the fact that I couldn't feel for the characters because of their extreme personalities. There was not a single character in the story that I could identify with. I found that Tartt took the stereotype of university students too far. It seemed that every single student drank, smoked and did drugs every single minute of their days. Also none of the characters were relatable. The characters were very 2-dimensional and was only able to take on ONE TRAIT. Henry was such an arrogant and cruel character, he was really the evil mastermind. Bunny was obnoxious. Richard was self-conscious and a liar. The twins were provocative. Francis was an overblown image of the stereotypic homosexual. Also, the whole book was tainted with the supernatural. The characters each had a hint of this. I didn't appreciate this too much because even though I love the genre fantasy I have different mindsets for fantasy and for a drama based on real life. This made it worse to connect with the stories because it wasn't a ghost story but there were unexplainable events that to explain one had to delve into fantasy even though everything else had a reasonable cause. This just made for an uncomfortable story. 

While, I wouldn't recommend this book I still enjoyed reading this to increase my reading list. I was quite surprised that someone would lend me such a thriller and murder story.  I was still very enthralled while

reading it and it made an enjoyable week long read.