The Secret History

(wavering between 4 and 4.5 stars)
Whatever you would imagine from a bildungsroman, this would be the exact antithesis of it. Donna Tartt takes every trope for the introverted main character, and takes perverse pleasure in subverting all of them, with unimaginable results.
Right from the first pages, you know you're in for a wild ride. Five eclectic students studying under an even more eclectic Ancient Greek teacher welcome an introverted student in their midst. The sixth student soon discovers, to his consternation, that the earlier students' hobbies, in an attempt to re-enact an ancient Greek ritual, have taken a turn for the macabre. What follows is a whole lot of gallows humor, mixed with more than a tinge of the surreal.
This masterpiece is extremely hard to review, because the mix of emotions it evokes is mind-bending. The only thing to criticize about the work is that it adopts a very glacial pace in parts - Donna's preference to sprinkling plot in the midst of character exposition, it turns out, is not always for the best.
In spite of all its shortcomings, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book. This is not a book to be rushed through, as this is the furthest thing from a mystery novel, or a ‘whodunnit'. Rather, it is meant to be savored, both for the pleasure you get while reading it (the characters are one of the best I've seen in modern fiction), and for the melancholic aftertaste it leaves you with.