The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
About six years ago, my boyfriend of the time brought me to a lake where he was meeting a jet-skiing co-worker. The day prior, he asked me to go, saying I could meet his co-worker’s girlfriend, with whom he thought I’d get along. I was doubtful. I was annoyed with his persistence that new friends are good, and also that it was a way for him to pawn me (and my interests) off on somebody else. But when I said to him and his co-worker, “That means I’ll have to shave,” and the co-worker called his girlfriend to ask her and she said the same thing, then I figured, “Okay. I’ll give it a go.” When I got there, Alice was sitting at the end of a dock reading a book. She couldn’t put it down. She was almost finished with it. As a gift a while later, she gave me the book with a translated passage from T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (one of my favorite poems). The passage was the introduction stanza in Italian.I started reading the book then, while I was in college, but I was heavily distracted and didn’t get too far into it. I wasn’t paying attention, I was missing things, and I thought it’d be best to wait. I finally picked it up again on Sunday. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt, was absolutely amazing. I am shocked that I ever put the book down and feel like a dullard for doing it!
First, the protagonist and narrator, Richard Papen, matures so subtly throughout the novel. It’s apparent he’s maturing, but Donna Tartt does in a very natural way. Every character in the book: Henry, Camilla, Charles, Francis and Bunny, are people I could have easily fallen in love with in college. Upon closing the book, I realized I wanted those friends, that connection, despite all downfalls and conflicts and trials. Henry was the most mysterious, the most charming, the one I wished I could be with for a week, in solitude, him educating me, me drooling over his shoes. No matter what he looked like, I think his mind would have made me faint with loveliness.
The story was phenomenal. An adventure into classics, an understanding among friends that drove some of them crazy, a heartbreaking ending, and all based on a commitment they made that was socially unacceptable, but right and accepting among them—shockingly, with me accepting it as well. Go read it. Now.
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