Rating: 
Summary: Excellent, multilayered, deft, disturbing
Review: This is a terrific book. It exactly captures the feel of being a student at a small, elite, Eastern college. It's full of beautiful imagery -- even the ugliest scenes are written with a sense of scene and beauty that makes them a pleasure. Also, the moral element of the story is fascinating. The murder victim is repugant, shallow, pretentious, a bully. Yet, the murderers, who are none of this, are, still, murderers. Finally, Tartt is a babe, if the jacket picture means anything. I think it would make a crummy movie -- it's too intricate and atmospheric, but I'd love for someone like Peter Weir to give it a shot. An amazing book, and I'm looking forward to what she writes as she matures.
Rating:
Summary: It is indeed suspenseful, just not in the common way.
Review: This is a brilliant novel. The chief complaint that Kirkus Reviews and a few others choose to lodge against it is that it's not "suspenseful." Well, of course it isn't, at least not in the traditional sense: the name of the victim and the names of the murderers are all clear from the first page of the prologue. "The Secret History" is not a murder mystery, and those who fault it seem to do so because they judge it on that basis. It is a psychological mystery; the "suspense" is derived not from wondering who was killed or "whodunnit," but from wondering how the events will impact the narrator and his companions. None of the characters are outwardly "evil," and the novel is chilling indeed due to its structure: 1)The prologue: Just after the murder has occurred. The first sentence tells us the name of the victim, the rest of the prologue makes it clear who did it. 2)Part I: From long before the murder up to the murder itself. It's powerfully eerie to know that the murder is coming, but wonder how and why it will. *This* is the source of suspense. 3)Part II: The aftermath. No less suspenseful than Part I because the fates of the surviving characters are still extremely mysterious. This is indeed a powerful, beautiful, provocative and yes, suspenseful novel. Nuts to the naysayers. Buy it!
Rating:
Summary: You will die
Review: I first read this book a few months after it came out, but I never had the chance to discuss it with others. Though I've only read it straight through twice, I've read every page at least fifty times; there was a time when I read some part of it every night. And now I've read fifty some-odd little reviews of it here.Yes, it is in part an homage to Fitzgerald, and to _Gatsby_ in particular (this is no secret: at one point the protagonist takes _Gatsby_ out of the library). Yes, at times the writing is glib and Tartt loses any sense of perspective about her characters. It is self-indulgent, as, perhaps, a first novel should be. And no, Tartt was certainly not the literary ingenue who burst onto the scene, genius fully formed--for God's sake, she has an MFA from the Bennington creative writing program and she thanks Sonny Mehta in her Acknowledgements. But what is far more important is that this book demonstrates beautiful writing and superb storytelling. It is an unmitigated pleasure to read. It is touching to me to see, after ten or twenty readings, the very minor points of repetition, the very subtle ways in which the plot changed or scenes shifted from draft to draft (reread the two sequences in which Henry first tells Richard about the murder to see what I mean). No book of this complexity can be anything but a massive effort of rewriting, and Tartt clearly puts a lot of pain and thought into her craft. I take issue with sniping of the sort that characterized the _Baffler_ article on Tartt--so what if her answering machine quotes _The Waste Land_? The issue is one of aesthetic fetishism, but Tartt's minor kind of snobbism will not be the downfall of democracy. The book is not about Bally shoes and sleek little astrakhan coats and kerosene lanterns, though such details provide wonderful set dressing and lay the groundwork for the brilliant satirical passage surrounding Bunny's funeral. Really, Richard is straightforward about the themes of his story: class, college friendship, infatuation and love; our banal capacity for evil; and the realization that you will die. Read it, please.
Rating:
Summary: haunting
Review: Read this when it first came out, and still it resonates in memory. Another world, speaking of college life that should be familiar to anyone, but is totally foreign. Isolated locale, and isolated social system. Anything can happen, and does. Where oh where is Tartt's next effort? What became of her? If Jay McInerney is still writing, why isn't Donna?
Rating: 
Summary: For the snob in all of us
Review: I've read this book many times during my undergraduate and early graduate years, and now I realize I did so to attempt, by some literary osmosis, to absorb some of the qualities in the characters that I admired. The intelligence, the aesthetic mastery, the wealth. This is, of course, foolish, and now that the spell has broken, so to speak, I see the novel for what it is: a story about selfish, arrogant, insecure social misfits, wrapped up in erudition and well-researched storytelling. Has Donna Tartt succeeded in writing an incredibly engrossing novel? Of course, which is more than I can say for many of her contemporaries. But let us not forget we're dealing with fictional characters, however human we may want them to be, and at the end I found myself sick of them and sick of the narrarator. Tartt, at times, writes a bit too consciously, in Hemmingnway-esque literary masturbation style, which appealed to the immature, wanna-be scholar within myself. She has produced a work of art, no matter what personal issues I may have with it, because she gets people talking. What more does an author want? I recommend this book with one caveat: don't kid yourself when reading it. You shouldn't be able to identify with those hollow souls.
Rating:
Summary: One of the finest pieces of fiction I have ever read.
Review: As a small university graduate hailing from New England this novel sat well with me from the start. The setting, combined with plot caused me to shiver with thoughts of home and reminders of a different time in my life when academics were my goal and my friends and drinking helped me to get through it and past it. Back to the book, the whodunit is taken out of this thriller when Ms. Tartt tells who did it on the first page. The story consists of the why and how and is a most delightful read.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book by an extraordinarily educated author
Review: This is not a "whodunit" novel: we know the murderers from the very beginning, and through the pages we slowly, step by step,discover the reason which is beyond any expectation. All the characters are well profiled, and almost every page is full of discussions on Greek and Roman philosophy, arts and religion. Donna Tartt has no problems with words - you simply can't leave the book until you reach the last page. Even then, you feel the need to start reading all over again. An astonishing debut and pure pleasure for a demanding reader who wants more than just a thriller. Rich vocabulary, great knowledge of history, art and culture, lots of emotions and humor.Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: One of the most over-rated books ever
Review: Not suspenseful, not involving, and definitely not interesting. Basically, not any of the million things that its slobbering fans describe it as.
Rating:
Summary: Where's the movie?
Review: It's reported that, shortly after publication, Tartt received a million for the screenplay rights. Scott Ridley, the director of "Shine," was supposed to have been shooting the film two years ago. What happened? Was it so bad it didn't even merit release on video? As for the novel, it's indeed exceptionally well crafted. Especially noteworthy is the portrait of Bunny, the novel's victim and perhaps the most self-indulgent yet recognizable intellectual fraud ever captured in literature. (Is this why so many students love the book--its unmasking of their overrated, supposedly gifted classmates?) In addition, the book is an incredibly effective black comedy on the American way of death and dying. Tartt is exceptionally reserved in giving any details about sex and Dionysian orgies, and she fails to deliver a Hitchcockian resolution. Her avoidance of these conventions helps insure the literary quality of novel, though some additional attention to the Dionysian currents that lure and then damn the story's student-protagonists would have improved the credibility and narrative effectiveness of the whole.
Rating:
Summary: a briliant and haunting book
Review: Tartt's debut novel disturbs one even more every time you return to it. She sketches the beauty of self destruction and the mystery of passion. There are so many subtle, yet deeply moving aspects to these characters, their relationships and their surroundings that each reread turns into a compeling, dark and sombre journey. Even characters that seem to be of relatively less importance show more and more complexity every time one rereads the book so that, like Richard Papen, I will probably never feel that I can crack the mystery of what really happened to them. This story will haunt me for a long time.
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