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Summary: Nothing short of spellbinding
Review: I opened this book expectng a murder mystery. I got so much more than that....Donna Tarrt has broken free of any cliche she might have become mired in - college life, romance, mystery, and drama, she has avoided them all and blended an unlikely cast of characters into an intoxicating tale of murder, guilt, and group politics.
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Summary: How 'bout some coherent development?
Review: Donna Tartt has a solid grasp of the English language, but she doesn't have the faintest clue as to what she should do with it. Certainly not waste any of it on developing trifles such as relationships, characters, pacing or plot. A 280-page (AT MOST) book was thrown on her personal rack and revamped as a weighty tome guaranteed to cure insomnia. It had absolutley nothing to do over the course of the last third before she wraps up the project in an utterly absurd "climax." The icing on the cake, however, comes in the epilogue: Tartt cobbles together a wrap-up that seems to have roots in the "crawls" that appear at the end of an awful TV movie of the week. There is probably a very good reason that she hasn't done anything since: she is completely inept when it comes to storytelling.
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Summary: I'm longing for a new 'Donna Tartt' novel !
Review: I thought this book was really great so I read it over and over and I still find it a spellbinding and gripping story. I could never get tired of it, but I'm longing for new novel, so dear ms. Tartt, I beg of you, please write another one!!!
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Summary: Tartt and what she's done to me
Review: When i first came across this book i was 16 years old, thinking if i should really choose Classics in my senior year in Greek High School. As you may understand i read it in Greek (In which the translation is absolutely marvellous) and then in English. After reading it, or should i say after being enchanted by it (i read it 15 times after all)i chose Classics without any further doubts. It s been three years but still, from time to time i find my self wandering in its pages. I am still in love with Henry (but after all i was always attracted by dangerous and intellectual types)and the idea of this Bachea as well as of these two murders still seems to amaze me. I have no idea how Tartt managed to write something so powerfull and sentimental at the same time, tragicall and intellectual. I would really like to meet her though and discuss about that difference between "feu", "fire", and "pyr"(which is a word that amazes me still and after all i am a native greek language speaker!). I would recomment this book without a doubt but i do not feel that everyone would see it in the same way. Nevertheless it remains a great book.
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Summary: Please, Ms. Tartt! Write something else soon!
Review: The person who wrote the Kirkus review of "The Secret History" in 1992 is obviously on crack. I can't understand how one is unable to become completely taken with Richard and the other characters in the novel. Henry still haunts my dreams all these years since I first read the novel. The way Tartt describes the loneliness, the longing, and doom of this group of characters is just amazing and humbling. Ever since I read the novel, I can't read an inferior novelist's work without throwing the book against the wall and yelling, "Why can't you be more like Donna Tartt?" I plan to read "The Secret History" again when I get a good block of time (though I know I won't need it--it only took me two days to read it the first time) and I'm sure I'll love it even more the second time around.
Rating:
Summary: An engrossing account of a descent into evil
Review: I, too, am flabbergasted by the Kirkus review of this book - did we read the same thing? Both my wife and I enjoyed Ms. Tartt's novel as much as anything that we've read in years: it is spellbinding from the very first page, and is beautifully (and intelligently) written. The only other novels that I can recall having read that had a similar impact were John Fowles' "The Magus" and John Gardner's "The Sunlight Dialogues". One can only hope that Ms. Tartt writes a book of equal quality soon.
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Summary: forget the flaws, this book is way too good to nit pick
Review: I had never heard of the Secret History or Donna Tartt when I bought this book in 1993. I just thought it looked interesting when I picked it off the shelf. Since then I have lent it to about five people and they have all read it quickly and thought it very good. Yes it is long, and the plot is not always swiftly running, but I don't think plot is the main, or even major point of the novel. For me, the best parts are the descriptions of the characters and their environment, the attention to detail, the conversations, the evocation of this bizarre, cloistered existence bang in the middle of modern day America. My favourite character was Francis. He was the most human I think. On first reading, I didn't like Richard much at all. I thought he was far too bland. But after a few rereadings I liked him better. I think a certain blandness is necessary for his character - to allow us to take in his world with that much detail and clarity. I also think that we very much become Richard-like characters as we get pulled into the journey. At first maybe we are skeptical and aware of Donna's romantic, writerly style, but we are seduced by the text, just as Richard is by the almost fictional world he has also been thrown into. By the end of the novel, I felt very much like the faceless observer that Richard essentially is.One of the things I liked most about the Secret History was the visual imagery. It's vivid and beautiful (in a beauty is terror kind of style), direct on the senses in quite a strange way - lush and primal and not really contemporary, disposable america at all. I also read in an interview with Donna Tartt that she had sold the film rights to the book. I think it would make a fantastic movie as long as it wasn't turned into some big Hollywood blockbuster with Keanu as Richard (although I think he'd be quite good as Richard), Gwyneth and Brad as Camilla and Charles, Ewan McGregor as Francis and ...I can't think of anyone famous who would be likely to be cast as Henry. Anyway, the bottom line is, if you're after a quick thriller, don't read this book, it's not about that at all. It's really about, finding your primitive instincts and losing yourself in beauty and the sensory world.
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Summary: Great Book! Still waiting for her next one!!
Review: I loved this fun book and so did the 8 women I recommended it to. I am surprised it has not been made into a movie yet. I only wish Ms. Tartt would come out with another one! I love her writing style and strong characters.
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Summary: IGNORE the Kirkus Review
Review: I am almost as enthusiastic as most of the readers who commented here. This book is great fun and not the slightest bit pretentious. Pretentious is when a writer only pretends to know what she's talking about. This writer DOES know. The classical millieu that these characters long to inhabit IS ultimately alien and inaccessible and this writer knows it -- read the epigraphs -- but that's exactly what's wrong with these characters. They know their Greek declensions and they understand more than most about the seduction of antiquity. But they cannot reproduce it, relive it, or even get close. This unfulfillable longing is the heart of this sometimes shockingly amoral tragedy. And how ironic. What culture had a higher moral sense that the Attic culture? That these characters know it, and don't get it is at the center of all that happens in this book. Her writing is never condescending nor does it miss a beat. The plotting is fine and intriguing and it's perfect for the subway. HERE'S MY ONE PROBLEM: The narrator seems gay but he isn't. Which would be fine, except that the plot only hints at any ambiguity in this area, and then sort of pompously drops it. It's almost as if Richard Papen is too sure of himself in this aspect of his psyche while being so otherwised morally confused. The impression I got is not that Richard Papen is "flat" but that he is ultimately an unanswered puzzle. I don't mean to suggest that you'd have to be gay to be interested in Hesiod. I do mean that he seems like a male character created by a female writer who doesn't really get the fine points of being male, gay or straight. The other characters seem more believable in this respect precisely because the reader doesn't live in their heads. This is a point that nags, but only subtracts a half-star from my otherwise unqualified recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful book, one of my favorites.
Review: After rereading this book for the third time, I came to Amazon to find another book by this author, but disappointingly enough, she has not written one. The structure of the book is magnificent, there are many allusions and poetic notes, but that in itself is not usually enough to engage me. It is the sweet earnest proposition of Donna's book: mainly that the beauty of releasing your sense of control and letting yourself go, of loosing yourself to another kind of control, can be possible. Can we do it? And would we be driven to madness if we did? Many of us, having gone to college, have experienced the giddyness of reinventing ourselves, our very personalities freed for the first time. Wasn't that heady? Tartt goes into the consequenses of such terrible things: the artificial aquaintances, the evils of false imagery (and idol worship?) for her at first benign and charming characters. The group eventually loosens and grows after being given some space, like plants, and this is the saving grace of the novel. Some people complain of the novel being long, but I disagree. The end is just as important as the rest of it, as Tartt really wanted to reveal the entire process, to its rather sordid but candid end. I really enjoyed this novel much better upon my third or fourth reading, (at first gulping it down like a bad detective novel) it is much better read slowly (I can't sleep very well, and I've have it for a while *sheepish grin*). Issues of self, education, money, and poisoning all blend together seamlessly, as it did for me in college. (I studied poisons.) Rather fun, no?
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