Rating: 
Summary: I LOATHE CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Review: I often find contemporary literature, popular I mean, to be quite simple, plain, easy. The Secret History is a Masterpiece-minus. It is that good. I don't believe it is Important. I would say that A Prayer For Owen Meany is Important. Owen is a Masterpiece-plus by a very good writer. TSH is a Masterpiece-minus by a woman with promise to be the pre-eminent writer and storyteller of her generation. This book is that good. And, so it Donna Tartt.
Rating:
Summary: [...] An amazing read, one that should not be missed
Review: This is mainly for those you who have read Secret History already. You will no doubt find that once you have read it, few books can come close to its great quality of "can't put it down". Well recently i read a book called The Midnight Partner, by Bart Davis. Certainly not a book for the younger reader (ie below 13), but anyone else should love it. It deffinatly has a feeling of the Secret History in it. Happy Reading
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely incredible.
Review: .. this has got to be the most incredible book that I've ever read. The author has a simply masterful talent for crafting a beautifully plausible story .. and with so many lines under it, with Grecian idylls and pitfalls.. "beauty is harsh".. "any action, in the fullness of time, sinks to nothing".. the characters are so tangible you can reach out and touch them. I'm anxiously awaiting a next novel from Ms. Tartt!
Rating:
Summary: Modern Classic
Review: This novel is many things. Most simply, it is a character-driven murder, mystery and suspense story. It has a spell like a university-set Great Gatsby, making it hard to define a lot of the substance that makes it such a rich and haunting apparition. Its characters drift in the subconscious of inspired yet searching students. You cannot be too practical about the book - it works from an essentially romantic premise: that of our strange and tragic, often unfulfilled condition. It is a profound account of friendship dramatically tested. It is told from an intelligent, involved yet almost neutral observational perspective that sustains an undercurrent of resonant sorrow, longing or struggling for something unattainable. Beneath the familiarity and traits of the characters and the lighter illustrations of university life the account not so much explores but expresses an awareness that there are forces and inter-relationships at work within the principle figures. For it is a contemporary Greek tragedy felt from the inside where an innocent intention - itself a relevant and powerful device - leads to destructive and damaging, perhaps unavoidable results. This device is a complete enactment of a genuine Greek bacchanal that briefly realizes some ideal to find a purity, a total release from thought and modern confinement and re-connect with the ancient energies and history of the past. Like all works, some relate to it and others do not. Published in 1992 it must principally be, I think, one of the ultimate student novels; the tale of dangerous minds; it is certainly a modern classic. With this in mind, perhaps it is like the distinction between students who are real university material, and those who are not, if there is in fact such a distinction. For it contains serious intellectual elements - the affect, value and influence of knowledge if you like - as well as a reflective, idealistic and occasionally humorous account of university or college life, 'a comedy of campus manners'. For those interested in studying the classics it is especially recommended. The narrator is pretty much an everyman character, who by interest becomes involved with characters that might not be considered typical outside higher universities. It celebrates through a specific story the stage of life of arrogant youth and its fresh yet hesitant freedoms for a sophisticated, well-off group of close friends. It had a profound influence on me, perhaps because I was awakening to this stage; beginning to think about choosing a university. Its appeal to me might have been the idealistic lifestyle of what it means to be a student: free and at ease with oneself, meditative and inspired by new influence, happy in a perfect environment for exploring one's ideas and interests around subjects and people who share these interests and the exchange and expression of real knowledge. Not only this but a campus lifestyle of sudden visitations and various sporadic events, experimentation with crazy ideas amid a real intimacy and familiarity with those of one's own kind. This novel will remain I am sure a source of inspiration to students. Its power is subtle and rooted in a space between two periods of time or history. An awareness of both reveals the reasons why history is studied; the effect of a whole perspective applied to the modern day. It subsequently hints at many qualities through its observations as well as to fundamental, unchanging human ones in both. A principle of this is perhaps the strength of a restlessness and struggle for purer happiness from such immediate knowledge and kinship. Arguably this is the reach for an unattainable, as such a balance must be endured as our very condition. Alternatively it highlights an extreme need to purge all inessentials and intellectual detritus through an experience of life that is lost in the past or is uncontrollable. Whatever the case, such power leads them to a means in the bacchanal that allows the sensation of it only briefly and it has a price and leads to tragedy. For the rest of us this will leave the distance and salvage and the glorious stories in the 'long, gleaming hall' of history.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and beautiful; destined to become a classic
Review: Tartt's _Secret History_ is a novel of rare beauty. Dealing with the events surrounding the lives of six classics students at a small college, the book deals with the nomos-physis relationship, the need to remain connected to our literary tradition, the ties which hold friends to one another, madness, and a treatment of nature which proves that Tartt is endowed with a truly classical mind. Her prose is carefully rendered, and the book is filled with passages which are heart-rending in their awe and wonder at the world. Her descriptions of Hampden in winter, of time spent in the country, even of death...these are some of the most beautifully rendered passages of the decade's fiction. Yet these passages recall classical descriptions in their terrible starkness. Julian, the students' teacher, explains the terror inherent in beauty quite eloquently in one of my favorite passages from the novel: "It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, 'more like deer than human beings.' To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn." I've returned to this book in times of distress and jubilation alike, and always it acquires new associations, new memories of the events surrounding each re-reading. Buy this book and read it immediately. It will remain on your shelf forever.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Flawless, But Still Impressive
Review: I have read "The Secret History" many times since its first publication in 1992, and, as an admitted literary snob who rarely makes forays outside of the 19th century, my allegiance to this contemporary novel is, in and of itself, a testament to its power. Tartt, who is evidently well-read herself, provides no shortage of fascinating allusions throughout this suspenseful work. Some critics have accused her of ostentatiously cramming everything she learned from her liberal arts education into one volume, but I think this literate approach is appropriate for the book, given its subject matter and the nature of its characters. As I reread the book, I see that it is not flawless. Tartt tends to repeat herself, and her editor should have been vigilant over this. (For example, in one early scene, Henry tells Richard that Bunny's family "doesn't have a cent," and Richard is surprised. About a hundred pages later, Henry tells him this again, and Richard again seems surprised, saying he thought they were bluebloods. The book is rife with little redundancies of this kind.) Secondly, Tartt often lacks a tight wrap-up before her space breaks, and the dramatic pauses often fizzle out. There are also moments where Tartt, normally so lavish with her descriptions, "holds out" on the reader-- for example, when Henry (in regards to the Bacchanal) says that "there was a certain carnal element to the proceedings," and we never find out exactly what this "certain element" was, it strikes this reader as being an evasive cheat. And then there is Bunny's notorious letter to Julian, in which he reveals all that he knows; I felt that the text of this letter needed to be included in order for it to seem truly damning to the rest of the Greek scholars. I also think, arguably, that Tartt made a mistake in killing off Bunny, who was one of the book's most singular characters. The story flattens out and loses a great deal of his charm after his demise. How she could have approached the book differently is hard to say, but the second half of "The Secret History" does suffer as a result of the actions taken by the surviving characters. Aside from all that, "The Secret History" is a marvelous tangled web of a book, and the author-- who composed this novel when she was in her 20's-- is one of our most ambitious and promising scribes. I look forward to her new book, which I've heard is to be titled "Henry Darger," due out later in the year.
Rating:
Summary: How I know I'm not a novelist...
Review: Donna Tartt just does an amazing job weaving together classical literature, folklore, and greek mythology, with a modern, coming of age tale sprinkled with just enough murder and intrigue. What a truly imaginative story. Her understanding of Greek mythology is astounding. The book flows well and kept my attention througout. I thought it was great. The ending was a little weak, but you really will be amazed by the depth of the writing.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to put down while reading, & then glad you're done....
Review: The Kirkus review is way off the mark, the usual drivel in search of profound statements. I don't know what he/she has been reading, but I will say, this is a story which reaches to the primal streak in all our souls. The story is fantastic. The detail is worthy of Michener but focused entirely around emotions and affairs of the mind of people, those elusive, rational yet clearly unpredictable qualities all of us are afraid of revealing or even thinking for fear we could get get comfortable with being the monsters we know humans are capable of. The story revolves around the fallacies of life, the follies of thinking, and the lines of so-called normality we all brush up against and fear we might cross. And this book lays out those fears, that indeed, in a different time and place, we are all capable of not only seeing the demons inside us most clearly but embracing them to act uncivilly in the most civilized manner. A great read, but be prepared to have a more than passing knowledge of Classical history. A good reference to the Classics will be helpful, for many of the references serve only to underscore the truly barbaric nature from hence we all sprang. On a different note, being from Vermont I was a tad dismayed with the apparent lack of knowledge of the area displayed by the author, which took away from the credibility of the story. Another failing on the part of the author and the editor(and contradiction) to clearly establish the time period. If it's the early to mid 60's (which is the right time frame for the feelings and practices) then there are at least three references which cause someone who pays attention to that consternation (I know, it's only a story!) I'll still give it 5 stars, and hope I never visit the depths of my mind as these characters do.
Rating:
Summary: ooooooohhhhhhh, aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
Review: If you're reading the reviews here trying to decide whether you should read this book, let me just clear that up for you right now; you should. You absolutely should. It's a fascinating book; an excellent story told with breathtaking skill. But when you consider this was a young person's first novel, well, it's truly humbling. Ms. Tartt knows many things you do not, her education was not only far superior to yours, but she chose much more stimulating and oblique subjects to study. She deserves to be considered a legend. Mink gives her BlackGlamma Status as a literary superstar.
Rating:
Summary: Astonishing debut novel...
Review: One of the best contemporary books I've read yet. Beautifully written language, yet also exists as the breathless kind of page-turner that is so popular these days. I can't wait for Ms.Tartt's new book (hopefully coming soon). You'll do yourself a favor by reading these tremendous novel.
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