Rating: 
Summary: Very engaging.
Review: This story about a murder committed by a group of Classics students is surprisingly captivating.I bought the book on a whim and am in the midst of reading it now. I'm just about done with it. I've found it difficult to put down. The characterizations are well done, the plot is unusual and I've found it to be a steadily good read all around. Can't wait to see how it comes out. This book, in my humble opinion, is very good.
Rating: 
Summary: 100% recommendable
Review: i find myself recommending this book to any- and everyone. i read it when i was a backpacker, and found that the inspiring backpackers i met along the way - the ones to whom i really was excited about recommending this book - had, of course, already read it. even now, i'm back in the worker-bee world, i find myself running into possible sages and thinkers who, if they haven't read it, really really ought to. and when they do, they thank me.
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Summary: Will Always Be on My All-time Favorite List
Review: I read this book almost ten years ago and it still resonates a feeling of having read a book that was satisfying. The elements of suspense, literature, classicism, college life, and growing pains combined for a fulfilling literary experience.
Readers got a glimpse of the privileged life of America's "elite" and how one young man longed to belong. He didn't realize that the games he played would involve murder and deception. I loved the concept of the Classics theme. I plan on re-reading this book and will definitely order the new one.
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Summary: the (not so secret ) history of A Little Friend
Review: Because "The secret history" sold over 770 000 copies in the Dutch Translation, Donna Tartt decided to publish her new novel first in Holland and Belgium. Well, it's available over here since september 14 and it really was worth the 10 year-wait. It is a marvellous, mysterious, humorous and passionate novel written in the same rich style as "History". So, don't hesitate. Buy The Little Friend and enjoy for hours and hours.
Rating: 
Summary: badly written, pretentious, derivative drivel
Review: The Kirkus review says it all, but I feel obliged to add my two cents, for the sake of art, or objectivity, or decency, or something. "The Secret History" fails hilariously (or depressingly, depending on how you look at it) on every level it aspires to. Its characters are wooden and unbelievable, its plot preposterous, its prose excruciating and gaseous. It's essentially a [take] of John Knowles' considerably superior "A Separate Peace," unforgivably lengthened to 500+ pages and saddled with a ludicrous pseudo-Gothic horror theme (Dionysus comes to Bennington). Every sentence seems to pose in front of a mirror and go on and on about itself, God knows why. Since Tartt can't write, she lets the cliches write for her: the first sentence of the book ends with a lament on "the gravity of our situation" (how about "how serious it was"?) and things don't improve from there. Ordinarily one might forgive this kind of thing, but Tartt so obviously wants to be taken Very Seriously that one is entitled to laugh at her ghastly English (among other things, she apparently believes that "peremptory" means "perfunctory"). More serious problems include: the cast of characters, which consists of pallid refugees from the aforementioned Knowles and from Fitzgerald, absurdly spouting 1920's-style exclamations and asides ("Goodness!", "Richard, old man!", etc.), none of whom is at all interesting, original or alive in any way; the endless torrent of Western Canon quotations, most of which serve no purpose except as vehicles for authorial vanity and pretentiousness; and the deep foolishness of the book's central assumption, which is--roughly--that a bunch of murdering thugs can be viewed as attractive and sympathetic if they can quote Homer in the original Greek. This is such obvious [bull] that it leads me to wonder what in the world its fans think they are responding to. But I guess the answer is simple: blatant appeals to intellectual snobbery still work--and on a grand scale, too, to judge from the quantity and tenor of the response. In a way it's almost touching that large numbers of people are so dazzled by all the references to Euripides, Nietzsche, and the "Five Great Cultures," so bowled over by the untranslated gobbets of Latin, Greek, and French, that they don't see that all this high culture is just window-dressing designed to disguise the worthlessness of the product itself. Interestingly, the only part of the book that's worth anything as literature is the section devoted to the miserable winter break Richard spends trying to fix up his house: with the Gothic blather in abeyance, Tartt's prose tightens up, the relentless gloom of the novel gets a plausible objective correlative in Richard's misery and isolation, and Richard himself briefly emerges as a sympathetic character dealing with real problems. It's funny, and revealing, that even Tartt's most positive reviewers repeatedly single out just this passage for criticism: they're not looking for fiction, they're looking for "class." Well, they have their reward.
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Summary: Hooray! Her second novel is now out in print
Review: A true novel of character development that stands out from the morass of slick and worthless writing now on the market. I'm fortunate that it took ten years after its publication for me to stumble on this gem, because now her second novel is in print.
Rating:
Summary: Secret History
Review: This remains one of my favorite books in a very extensive personal library. Ms. Tarrt writes with passion and with grace, and above all with a clear understanding of the devastating power and beauty of the ancient Greek language. As a Classics major myself, I cannot help but respect that.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising, compelling, chilling but slow
Review: One of the better murder/college novels out there, very similar to that style of Bret Easton Ellis but without all the swearing and sex. It's very well written for a first novel and will have you wanting more of the author's work, however I felt the plot was very chilling--too chilling--and not very human; which i suppose is the point. The Greek Tragic comparisons (The five students in the book are studying the Greek Classics excusively) are actually very good--incest, deceit, greed, cold blooded murder... and the characters and the murder is creepy in a good way. This book will have you up all night--well, maybe two nights. Not the greatest but still worth reading for another perspective on the East Coast college life.
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Summary: I love this book!
Review: This is a wonderful book. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A History of Secrets
Review: I was so surprised to see that the first review of this excellent book was that terrible Kirkus one that I just had to write my own review as a rebuttal. On the contrary, The Secret History is a very rich, paradoxical, and incisive book that most intelligent people should enjoy. Tartt's style is very interesting- lyrical, chilling, and scholarly; yet also hysterically funny in places you least expect it. The storyline, extremely unpredictable and constantly surprising, is filled with sly symbolism and clever foreshadowing. It is a very page-turning, satisfying, challenging read which I highly recommend.
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