The Secret History

Rating:
Summary: Excellent novel. Best book I've read since I found Tolkien.
Review: I found The Secret History thoroughly engrossing. Rarely does an author manage to earn a spot amoung the classics and few books deserve to be amoung them more. The characters and plot both were believable, full, and most of all highly interesting. Clearly, anyone who found the book insusbstantive, self-indulgent, or boring lacked the capacity to understand the plot, characters, and ending. Perhaps if more authors wrote in such a stunning stlye, fewer people would need our pity. I can only recommend this book in the strongest terms and hope all will one day read, The Secret History.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful paranoic tale of the aftermath of a murder.
Review: I am surprised at the poor review this book received. The book was deeply interesting and full of a paranoia that I was pulled into. I really couldn't put the book down. Usually a book about "bohemian type students" fails to interest me because the students do very clearly stupid things, and then seem to ask for your compassion. Not here, they are absorbed in the unfolding of events and make the best of each situation, and they couldn't care less about compassion. While reading this novel, I spent much thought as to the previous relations between the characters. Did Henry plan the death all along, he seems to have had a problem with bunny before. Did Julian really not have a clue, or did the fact the letter from bunny was seen by more than just henry in the professors study. I gave this book a nine because there is always something better, some book out there that just hits a chord within you, but this book is one the best I've ever read. The reviewer listed at the top of the page read the book without caution, without paying attention to the details which brought the book out of the pages and dropped a cloak of paranoia around the reader for a couple of days. I hope that if Donna Tart reads this, she will write another novel. I would love to read it, and if she is then please e-mail me (I'd love a chance at an early reading.) Sorry to drone for so long but the book is worth it, more than any book you've read this year.

Rating:
Summary: Guess I'll have to read it again...
Review: .... I read this book about 5 years ago and have been pondering lately whether to re-read it, even though my backlog of books purchased yet still unread is enormous. Stacks everywhere. Oh well. After reading some of these comments, I remember the feeling I had of not being able to put it down, but not being able to explain to myself why it was so addictive. I tried to get friends to read it, but I guess they were all too old, or maybe I am just immature for my age, but I recall it as one of the best fiction reads I'd had in ages.

Rating:
Summary: Where is Donna Tarrt now?
Review: This book is enthralling from page one till the end. Great characters and storyline. Pick it up NOW.

Rating:
Summary: a swell piece of word
Review: A magical, elegant, chilling tour-de-force, The Secret History is one of the few novels that could be recomended to ANY reader. The narrative is deft and engrossing enough to make fellow Mississippian John Grisham jealous. But the novel avoids the usual compromises and cliches of Grisham because its focus is not its plot, but the atmosphere and the characters. A marvelous debut.

Rating:
Summary: I read it & began again at the beginning.
Review: I hadn't heard of this book when I began reading it. My best friend sent it to me -- & cemented that best friend slot. It's an excellent book. I read it, neglecting the other parts of my life, and immediately began again at the beginning.
I don't usually read books written by women; Tartt managed to write literature that goes beyond gender stereotyping. Will be ordering copies to pass on to others.

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully detailed veneer over a hollow core.
Review: There is no question that Donna Tartt is a writer of great talent. She masterfully creates her characters and vividly potrays their isolated world. The mystery is well-paced and makes reading this book a very intense pleasure. Perhaps "pleasure" is not quite the right word, however, because my ultimate feeling from this book was deep depression. The characters are revealed as vapid, egocentric, spoiled rich kids with no moral compass whatsoever, and -- for all their academic brilliance -- too ignorant to realize their fundamental weakness. Tartt's detailed description of the characters' downward spiral into alcohol and drug excess demonstrates a powerful talent. Unfortunately, "The Secret History" uses that talent to present a story that is both troubling and depressing. I have read far less talented writers who succeeded in identifying, examining and explaining noble aspects of the human spirit. There is none of that here. Perhaps that is why the book has remained so long on my mind: I wonder what Ms. Tartt could do if she focused her enery on a broader world -- the world beyond the snobby, amoral world of privileged preppies and their wannabe hangers- on.

Rating:
Summary: A good, not great, book
Review: When I bought this book I read it all the way through, and when I finished, I didn't know exactly why it had a hold on me. I sympathized with the narrator, Richard, but I certainly didn't like any of his fellow conspirators. But I did want to know how it all turned out, if Richard survived the madness descending on them all, and I kept turning the pages. What I found compelling in this novel was how Richard, who has little in common with the Classics students who befriend him, observes the moral collapse of those he considers his betters. They are all smarter than him, share closer friendships, and come from better family, yet it is Henry and Charles and Camilla and Francis who slip into insanity. I didn't mind so much that none of them show much remorse for their cold-blooded killings--they consider themselves safe from the bumpkin local law enforcement. But the secret nips at them, gnaws at them, and eventually destroys them, because of the pressures they bring onto each other. Except for Richard, who, perhaps, will survive. As seemingly everyone knows, it took Tartt 8 years to write this book, and it shows. The book is rich with detail; actually, too rich. I don't speak Greek, and little French, but I really didn't mind Tartt loading up the book with enough detail to baffle this simple English major. But the book is ponderously plotted, at times frustratingly so, and at times I feared I would never finish. I did, and have never felt the need to return. I do agree with one previous reviewer, who said that if you liked this book, read "The Great Gatsby". You'll finish in a third of the time, and when you do, the world will seem a different place. And that's the greatest compliment I can pay to any book.

Rating:
Summary: The secret jewel of mistery
Review: Dead body. Acutally: dead Buddy. Found somewhere near Hampden, Vermont. After the snow is gone. You soon forget this shadowy introduction. The events begin to pull you in. You really get a part of the lectures in Greek, of the somewhat different friendships... People and places are so real, Tartt's world lingers to surround you in your chair. A very special, vivid and real book. However, once the investigation over Buddy's death gets completed, the story slightly fades towards the end, and you wake up to your cat's purring. Real world still there? I read 'The Secret History' with Faith No More's 'King for a Day' album playing in the background. A perfect combination of these two! Looking forward to what's coming next from Ms. Tartt ...

Rating:
Summary: The best in modern fiction
Review:

Quite rarely am I able to read anything that's over 300 pages without starting to get a bit bored with a title. However, with Donna Tartt's debut novel, "The Secret History," the characters are so intricately described, and the plot is so irresistible that I found I couldn't, under any circumstances, put it down for a prolonged amount of time.

A friend of mine recommended this book to me, which was what finally got me to read it. Though I'd heard about it, read about it and seen it on shelves, something about the Classics aspect of the plot always intimidated me. Still, my friend told me of its greatness, saying, "It's the book that made me want to be a writer again." Indeed, reading this book gives me faith in modern authors.

Now, having read it, I feel silly for having waited so long. This book is a treasure and not too obsessed with the world of Academia, which instead adds to the story by figuring delicately into the plot, providing inspired allusions to the work and giving the book a great sense of class.

Each introduced character, even the minor and irrelevant one, is described in tremendous detail and with startling flair. No movie could ever do it justice, no other method could be used to tell a story like this.

The book is, quite simply, amazing. I loved it so much that I'm going to go back and find a hardcover edition. It's too beautiful to only be read once in a lifetime.