BEWARE: SPOILERS.
The story begins with our narrator, Richard, and his entrance into an exclusive Greek group at a college in Vermont. In the end, only Richard graduates from this school with a degree. Multiple people end up dead, a bacchanal is performed, drugs are done, cigarettes are smoked—just the typicalities college life.
“The Secret History” transforms a classic true crime novel into a unique representation of murder, where it seems that the culprits get away with it—until otherwise tortured by their meek minds, perceptible to events like murder (as anyone’s would be).
Richard Papen is at first not accepted into the Greek studies program, which is manned by just one professor—Julian—but once he’s in, there is no turning back. The group of exclusive friends, Bunny, Henry, Charles, Camilla, and Francis, soon keep him in the loop on… most things, as they work on their Greek prose, and share secrets.
The beginning starts quite slow (meaning the first approximately 150 pages is full of almost nothing but character set up), but soon we are catapulted, immersed, into this world of privilege, tragedy, and murder. The characters (whom you will start to hate, unfortunately) plan, and execute, a beautiful end to one of their friends.
Even though we know who the killers are, who the victim is, and the events leading up to and the events after, the read is compelling, drawing persons with its elements of wit, intellect, and snobbery through Tartt’s immaculate composition.
I won’t lie, what compelled me to read this book at first was the discussions of it online. What turned me off was the fact that it was 600+ pages. Now that I’ve read it, I’m glad I did. It was quite worth the read.
If you need a shift from anything you’ve read before, this is certainly one to pick up. The book and it’s beautiful horrors will be sure to haunt me for some time.
