The Secret History by Donna Tartt. (The Secret History - Donna Tartt)

Member Name: prekrassnyi

Product:	The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Date:	20/08/08 (21 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Thrilling, insightful, debatable.

Disadvantages: A little slow burning at the start...

The Secret History, a muder-mystery in reverse, centers on a group of classics students and the stranger they let into their ranks - Richard Papen - a young man with a flaw which is this: 'the appreciation of beauty at any cost'. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, yet I haven't met anyone who hasn't been swept up by Richard's own apprecation of beauty. Every observation, pitched for poetic meaning and loveliness, makes you hunger for more so you become to understand it intimately. This however distances Richard, and in the turn, the reader from the beauty Richard finds with and in his new friends - Camilla, Henry, Charles, Francis and Bunny - but this is a brilliantly executed move by Donna Tartt as it has the effect of having you pinned up against the narrative window, waiting for a glimpse of insight. It doesn't need to be said that the whole novel is mesmerising in how it's written, the pace and the dialogue. To go into the plot would spoil it but I can sincerely say that no other novel has me returning to it, if only just to read a few pages as much as this one does.

Summary: A justified classic that only deserves more praise.