The Secret History

My husband has been recommending this to me for ages, and I finally got around to reading it. Tartt's writing is beautiful and vivid, literary without being pretentious. The story itself challenged me to look at it from so many different levels, and I found my opinions of characters and the terrible things they do shifting from chapter to chapter, even page to page. This is a story about consequences, and about people used to living consequence free suddenly crossing line after line. It's about privilege, perspective, and possibly too effective Dionysian rituals. Highly recommended to anyone who loves a murder mystery where the murder itself is not the mystery.

Recensie van audioboek (via Storytel)

Bon, ik denk dat dit boek over mijn hoofd is gegaan, want ik vond er niet zo veel aan. Ik vond het vooral saai en langdradig en heb mezelf moeten dwingen om het uit te lezen.

De schrijfstijl is wel mooi en meeslepend, vooral in het begin, maar de plot is dunnetjes en blijft dan nog eens eindeloos aanslepen in banaliteiten.
De stukken die me aan het verhaal aantrokken – het charisma van een professor die misschien niet helemaal kocher is, het verkennen van oude rituelen en bacchanalen – daar werd eigenlijk nooit echt op gefocust, maar terloops even vermeld om dan te focussen op de saaie en vage personages, hun zelfbeklag en hun onverklaarbare, verachtelijke en onrealistische gedrag.

Op geen enkel moment voelde ik me betrokken en het kon me dan ook weinig schelen hoe de zaken zich ontvouwden. Ik las alleen verder omdat ik het boek uit wou lezen en ergens nog hoopte op een onverwachte twist.
Helaas, ook het einde kon me niet overtuigen, in tegendeel, het overtuigde me des te meer dat ik het boek aan de kant had moeten leggen vanaf het moment dat het mij niet meer interesseerde.

Ik weet het echt niet. Ik aarzel nogal om negatief te zijn, want ik vermoed dat ik echt iets gemist heb of mis begrepen heb, gezien de enorme populariteit van dit boek.
Maar zoals het er nu voor staat was dit voor mij vooral een saai boek, dat veel te lang aansleepte, met weinig plot en geen enkel moment waar ik me betrokken, geïnvesteerd, verbaasd of nieuwsgierig voelde.

4 ⭑
ein geniales Buch und ein einmaliger Schreibstil. 4 Sterne hat es bekommen, weil es doch einige Längen hatte und einiges meiner Meinung nach überflüssig für die Geschichte war.
Am besten haben mir die Charaktere und deren “Abgründe” gefallen, sie waren total nachvollziehbar und einfach etwas was ich vorher noch nie so gelesen habe

I think that this author was asked to write a book that kids would have to analyze in high school. Also please make sure that it's just pretentious enough to be called a modern classic, and moody enough to become popular on TikTok.

I didn't hate this book. I just thought it was kind of boring. There are some great stories written about seemingly mundane lives that are incredible. The problem I have with this book is that they did not have mundane lives at all. In fact, they were quite unbelievable and yet it was still somehow incredibly boring.

I know that the whole point is that you're not supposed to like the main characters, but I truly did not like a single person in this entire book. Even the professors and parents were unlikable. It would be more depressing, except that it feels so removed from real life that none of the story actually feels that real.

I think one of the main reasons is popular is because of the dark academia aesthetic, and because it happened to hit the right market on social media. Obviously this author is incredibly skilled and has written other amazing works. This one just isn't my cup of tea.

I'm not a morning person and I found myself getting up every day at 6 am - in the middle of December - so that I could read as much of this book as possible before leaving for work at 8. I can't recommend this book highly enough. I'm trying to figure out who specifically I would recommend it for and I'm pretty sure that the only people I wouldn't recommend it to are the kinds of people who never enjoy fiction in any form and even they might find something to love here.

It's taking me quite a long time to gather my thoughts and properly put them down into coherent sentences. However, I have tried, I really did. But let me do something unorthodox here. I'll start with the ending and work back up. That ending. It frustrated me. I screamed and yelled like a little baby, throwing tantrums left and right. It couldn't just end like that. It couldn't. But I realized that Donna Tartt knew exactly how it would end when she wrote this. It was methodological. It was planned. It didn't fight against the current; it gleefully jumped in and swam with it.
All the characters that we've been introduced to have been horrible in some way. But let me tell you something that I realized. The characters in the special Greek Classics group were taught by Julian, their professor, that they were better than the rest. In fact, he made it a point that they would never mingle in the same classes as the gentry. He built them up, higher than they ever thought they could be, and convinced them of it. But those foundations that he built with his words and his belief in them came crashing down. The more superior, the highly intelligent students were the one that crashed to the abyss. The other characters that were horrible in some way, dealing with drugs or drank until they couldn't stand anymore, had decent okay lives. This irony, this juxtaposition of people versus the higher-class really made this book stand out. I can justifiably compare this to the Great Gatsby. This is perhaps even better than the Great Gatsby. Her characters and her writing is definitely on par with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh lord.
There are no antagonists in this book, at least any tangible ones. Granted, you could say that one of the group WAS an antagonist but he was just the unfortunate soul. But really, if I had to be specific, fate is an antagonist. They, themselves, were the antagonists. They fought so hard against what they believed they didn't deserve that they got worse punishments. I won't elaborate, but I'm going to leave only one thing here at the end of the review.
“Was it truly worth it?”

I had high hopes for this book, and it was ok but not really for me. Maybe I'm older than the target audience, too dumb, or too impatient. Or maybe my expectations were just too high.

I was expecting a real mystery and something really smart. There were Greek studies, but does that mean that they're super intelligent..? Or that the plot is?

I struggled getting through the 600 pages of this book, but I was not going to give up because I thought I must be missing something, there must be something being revealed later on that makes the whole story. It never got there, for me, but I'm glad I finished it so I don't have to wonder.

It's not bad, by any means, I did want to know what was going to happen, but it wasn't the masterpiece I was hoping for. It left me feeling like I had wasted my time engaging in the sobbings of group of entitled brats.

It also took me a loooong time to understand who was who of the brats, I got them mixed up all and didn't connect with them very much. A bit more the longer I read, but I didn't really care about any of them. Again, maybe I'm too old. I just wanted to tell them to grow up and get a life.

If you like powering through bricks in academic settings with a touch of myth and dark secrets, this might be for you. Lots of people like it. It left me kind of meh.

TWs: Animal death, drug and alcohol use, incest, PTSD/trauma, suicide/suicide attemptLive Forever.Richard joins a Greek class in college and is sucked into a whirlwind of events. I loved the writing and the prose of this book so, so much. The imagery and descriptions flowed throughout the book. I enjoyed the various references to different books, especially when Dostoevsky's [b:Crime and Punishment 7144 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1382846449l/7144.SY75.jpg 3393917] was mentioned. (C&P spoilers!!)I could see the contrast between the two. I felt like they were opposites, in a way that Raskolnikov committed the crime, yet had support from his loved ones, and turned himself in.In [b:The Secret History 29044 The Secret History Donna Tartt https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1451554846l/29044.SY75.jpg 221359], they all committed the murder, and in the end were going against each other, mistrusting, and eventually the death of Henry, and the severe trauma and PTSD afterward. I wonder how Henry truly felt at the end. It's kind of sad that the group eventually fell apart, but I suppose it wasn't an ideal/realistic one in the beginning. I was probably most sad at Richard's wound (and the events prior to it), like none of them really cared, or cared a lot, about him. Yet he helped, tried to figure it out with them, and make sense of all of this. A beautifully written, sad, tense, and secret history.

This entire novel was a wild ride starting from the middle of the first part to the very end pages. The prose was as delectable as I have heard and I was more thrilled reading this novel more than any other DA that I've gotten my hands on. It's a classic for a reason and deserves to be savored and read. 

Refreshing take on a murder mystery, less of a mystery more of a novel about a murder. What I liked about this book is that despite giving away half the mystery at the beginning, the integral question of why is the only one left and you are taken through the story being seduced by the character. They are by no means likeable or relatable, they are after all a group of murderers. I don't think that was the point. But by offering fascinating, almost romantic depictions of this group of friends, we understand Richard's enchantment. And then, we are left with the aftermath. Few novels about murders gets to talk about the aftermath and processing a traumatic experience. Examples of these would be Room by Emma Donoghue and The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (bc yes, Katniss was going through PTSD throughout the series). Instead of ending the book on the ‘resolution' of the murder, continuing the story throughout dissolution and disenchantment is one of reasons why this book will be in my “to keep/reread” pile. 

This is the kind of book that is properly read through the haze of a migraine. I find that that just might be the best way to try and put oneself in Richard's shoes. This was a truly captivating story, and as per usual, certain tragedies caught me completely by surprise. I'm just trying to process it now, I suppose.

I don't even know what to say. It's incredibly difficult to rate this book. It was weirdly inconsistent in managing to grab my attention. I felt like I was on a roller-coaster in some ways because it kept going up and down when it came to grabbing my interest. At times I was completely into it and couldn't stop reading and at other times I was slugging through it, bored out of my mind. This would have been helped if it was simply shorter. 
The book was also unexpectedly homoerotic, but with, like, no pay-off whatsoever. I've never read something so distinctly homoerotic and yet so unequivocally heterosexual in execution.
To call it a modern classic is accurate, in that it gave me all the same feelings as practically every other classic I have read. Particularly, I have similar feelings about this book that I do the Great Gatsby. The characters are flat and unlikeable which makes things hard for me, but they are at least interesting characters, which makes me want to continue. The good thing about Gatsby is that it's a short novel, whereas this one was way too long. That's what made it so boring at times. The good thing about TSH is that it has interesting plot points, which Gatsby sometimes lacked. Overall, though, I find neither particularly impressive.

2.5⭐️

I heard a lot about this book, mostly good things and that's why I waitied for few months to be available at the library.

First half of book was good, it felt like showing off with greek language and knowlegde in that area in general but I didn't mind. I liked characters and the mystery vail around them, especially Julian.
I can see why they wanted to kill Bunny and it made sense, because he kinda blackmailed them.

Second half was so hard to get through, could have been less pages. Romantic relationship between tweens was gross, I didn't see why was it necessary and didn't bring any value to plot.
Henry offing himself ... I dont get it, and the end was like ...
Julian disappearing when he figured about his students actions was not realistic at all, he didn't go to police or even confront them, he run away for reasons unknown to us. Book gave me a feeling he was going to be a influence and huge factor for their “What should we do now?” moment but no.
Richard is the only character I liked all along, and understood him in a way.

First half 5⭐️ and second half barely 2⭐️

Now that's what I call dark academia. I listened to the audiobook read by the author and I have to say I really enjoyed Donna Tartt's intonations. Being read by the author feels very authentic to the overall tone of both the narrator's point of view as well as all the character's attitudes. While this sort of story isn't usually my thing I was, for the most part, gripped by the story. Tartt's style can feel very long and perhaps meandering at times but when it came to this story I would say it served to add to the mysterious and academic settings. 

Given all the hype I've seen around the book I wasn't too sure of what I was getting into but overall I find myself charmed by the tale. I'm so enchanted by it I'd actually like to get back to it in written form one day to give myself a chance to highlight and annotate passages.