The Secret History

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Because the title calls back to Procopius's “The Secret History,” I've been wanting to read this book for twenty years, but I've never gotten around to it. I picked it up as an audiobook thinking that it would be a good way to while away drive time. Normally, high expectations are disappointed, but, in this case, I was surprised to find that I found myself drawn into the story and appreciating its slow development.

The story is a kind of 1980s bildungsroman - a kind of “The Great Gatsby” for the Age of Cocaine. This is probably not surprising since the author, Donna Tartt, went to school with and dated Brett Easton Ellis, the author of nihilistic, drug-soaked novels like “Less than Zero” and “American Psycho.” There is a sense of this nihilism in The Secret History, but also there is the alcohol saturation of The Great Gatsby.

The story begins with Richard Papen, a middle-class community college student, who applies to an Ivy League college, Hampden College, and is accepted. The story follows Richard as he gets accepted by Julian Morrow's Classics program and becomes friends with his fellow Classics students: stoic Henry, homosexual Francis, the twins Charles and Camilla, and the loudmouth Bunny. The story opens with the murder of Bunny by five other Classics students, so that is not a spoiler. The first part of the book builds up to why the murder happened; the second half of the book deals with the aftermath of the murder.

The first half of the book is a bit slow as Tartt sets up the relationships between the parties and builds up their characteristics. This half occasionally dragged, but was redeemed by excellent writing and a fair number of literary allusions. However, the second half of the book paid off in tension and the secrets of the characters.

I won't be the first person to note that these are not likable characters. The whole group are pompous, pretentious, perpetually drunk and have too much money for their own good. If you played a drinking game in the second half of the book of taking a shot whenever a character was described as drinking, you would be in the hospital getting your stomach pumped. It made me wonder about Tartt's years in her Ivy League college; did it really float on booze or was this what Tartt imagined as the archetypal college environment? Likewise, I was surprised by the references to the casual use of meth at an Ivy League college. We tend to think of meth as low-class; was it a new and trendy drug in the late 1980s?

Tartt's writing is superb. I also enjoyed watching her develop her plot. Things happened because they had to happen, but they also happened because the characters made them happen. The characters shared their secrets and kept their secrets in a way that tantalized and kept the reader interested.

Tartt was the reader of the audiobook. She did a very nice job, surprisingly nice in its professionalism. The one odd bit was that Tartt has a southern accent, and she gave her Yankee characters something of a southern twang (although she also did a starchy Vermont accent when the occasion required.) All in all, the audiobook was an enjoyable experience.

While I thought that the main characters were not likable, I found myself coming to like them. (Oddly, as I reflect on the book, the only character I consistently liked as a character was the drug-using, drug-dealing friend of Bunny's, Cloak Rayburn, who seemed to provide a comedy element to the story and the occasional good advice.) I also came to like these unlikable friends, as I came to accept their quirks. College is a time of quirkiness and making fast friends who remain for a lifetime.

But, perhaps, not over murder, although a good college friend should help you move the body.