I hadn't been aware of Donna Tartt prior to hearing about the The Goldfinch and giving it a read. That was about 11 years ago. I enjoyed that book, and knew she had a small oeuvre--just two others, and one of which was seen as a towering achievement. I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to this. A word should be said about my sister and my mom.
Now, my sister actually was an English major in college, and perhaps notably at University of New Hampshire. That's not Vermont, but think it could be seen as a "sister state" of sorts. I have always appreciated her taste in literature. Few others match up as directly with what we feel a book should do to be great.
Both of us perhaps get this from our Mom who is a very heavy reader, though often given to underplaying her taste. By that I mean, she will give me a mass paperback and acknowledge that it is kind of trashy but still amusing, and it could be a decent "guilty pleasure." Last year when my second niece was born, she flew out to be with my sister, and I noticed she had brought back The Secret History with her. This, after returning from an earlier visit with To Paradise, which came just as I had finished A Little Life--and while I meant to borrow that one after too, I think I needed a breather.
This was, however, serendipitous. For some reason with The Secret History, I had always been meaning to check it out but I kept forgetting about it. So I asked if I could borrow and she said when she was done, which was soon after. She said that it might make her seem basic or of having "less refined" tastes, but it might be the the best book she ever read, or close to being her favorite book. Of course, I had to prioritize it, pushing it ahead of several others that I had gotten for Christmas last year. I started it on the way back from Sweden and finished it in Mexico. That is the crawl my reading has slowed to, and generally just on vacation. In any case, both of them had read The Goldfinch and enjoyed it (ironically, my sister had the same experience as me with the film adaptation--we both forgot we watched it--and perhaps that is due to Tartt not having creative control). I think all 3 of us will want to check out The Little Friend next, which is what another friend actually considers her best, though acknowledges that as a minority position.
Another irony--a date once asked which books were my favorite and when I volleyed the question after just saying Molly lately--got the answer of The Secret History, which I felt was a "sign" since I had just started it. That was not to be, but was also informed I should listen to the audiobook, which is available on YouTube, just so I could hear Donna Tartt do Bunny's voice. Apologies if this long preamble on Tartt and family and friend connections is of little interest--I just feel she is one of the few "real ones" left, and if she ever delivers a a follow-up to The Goldfinch, it will be a "genuine literary event."
I've tried listening to the "Once Upon a Time....at Bennington College" podcast again (after consulting it for The Shards) and will need to dig in again shortly. Suffice to say, Tartt did not agree to be interviewed for the podcast, which is another mark of a true artist. Granted, giving interviews does not make one less of an artist, but refusal to do interviews lends a deeper air of mystery to a work, as well as the author's intent. They don't want to tell you how you are supposed to feel.
***
This book does not bury the lede. On the very first page, we know Bunny has been killed, and the only mystery of the book is the perspective from which its narrator recounts the events of that year at Hampden College in Vermont. It may be ten years later, or perhaps twenty. This is not a hard book to read, and though it is 550+ pages, and though technically I had it on the back-burner for about 4 months, it's a relatively quick read. There is a lot of dialogue.
The book is dedicated to Bret Easton Ellis and you can see the influence of Less Than Zero on it. There may even be characters that appear in both of their works. (Or perhaps not--the podcast is more content to uncover the real life inspirations for the characters.) These are like two sides of the same coin---except this one is almost 3 times as long. It may be more "Dickensian," but I think that adjective is better applied to The Goldfinch.
However, Less Than Zero is....about what, exactly? It is somewhat plotless, and that is what makes it good too, but it is vaguely about a group of three friends and one that eventually devolves into prostitution and drug addiction--though it is really more about a "vibe." By contrast, The Secret History definitely carries something of a similar vibe---except the characters are dorks.
They're dorks! In Less Than Zero, while they may not be the most popular people in their cliques, they are at least cool and hip, and when their more gentle or "embarrassing" emotions come into play, that is when it reveals its greater humanity and depth. The main characters in The Secret History are weirdos, nerds, and scholars of arcane academia (studying ancient Greek language). But yes, they do drink a lot and smoke a lot of cigarettes and do cocaine and smoke weed (though less often than others). I'm not suggesting that doing drugs makes you cool--but it does not seem to comport with my own human experience, that these types of students freely engage in these types of vices. This is not an ordinary situation and so it does not feel terribly off in any way, which is a testament to Tartt, who injects realism into a horribly fucked up situation gone wrong.
She does what she did in The Goldfinch--which is to write about a certain subject so well that it makes the reader care more about it. In that book, it was antique dealing. In this book, it is the study of classics, in their original ancient form.
This is where I note that it is not a perfect book and arguably does not deserve to be on the Best Books list--but if Goldfinch is on it, then so should be this. IMO, it is better than The Goldfinch, precisely because it is so strange, and it is done in such an arch way, and does not tie a little bow on the story.
Ultimately, it does turn into an absurdist thriller, and it feels somewhat less special as it goes along, but that didn't make me put it down. I think the key factor that makes it a special book is mining the emotion that comes out of the act, and demonstrating understanding on the nature of guilt, and what we choose to feel guilty about, or what it is be guilty in a more philosophical sense.
*
This is perhaps what makes it a Great Book, or a Nearly Great Book. It feels like there may be a somewhat messy quality to it--imperfect, which is par for the course for a first novel. And yet Tartt took much longer to develop a debut than Ellis. Enough with the comparisons, they have rather different trajectories. Suffice to say, this would make for a much better film than The Goldfinch, and probably a better film than could have been made of anything in either oeuvre.
It just feels somewhat out of left field when Richard casually mentions that he was doing coke the other night, or that he got stoned all throughout middle school. It does not seem to fit with this character that the first 50 pages of the novel treats so earnestly. This is just a quibble, however.
Probably somewhere around page 100, the novel reveals itself to be about this small circle of oddball students studying under an iconoclastic professor. These characters are indelible, even if they sometimes feel rote. That is, Henry, Francis, Charles, Camilla and Bunny. They carry a certain air about them that Richard finds highly attractive. They are clearly smarter than anyone else at the school, it seems. He soon joins them in their archaic curricula, and they welcome him as one of their own.
If there's any "messy" quality to the book, it is the way Julian looms so large over the first 1/3 of the novel, and then all but disappears (there are some spoilers that I will avoid). Regardless, his last couple scenes in the novel are masterfully written.
Much of it, however, is dashed off dialogue, "candy" for the reader, and I am not one to complain about that, but I did find a few moments to be missteps. I think the ending resolutions all make sense and work to the degree they can, but some of the moments along the way feel like necessary filler, and sometimes purely for shock value.
Of course there are flaws to be found in everything. Even if Tartt did not write a masterpiece, she did write a masterful debut, and one that hasn't lost its appeal for over 30 years now.
***
"Historicity does not ensure relevance " -Claude Fredericks
This is apparently a saying that Fredericks, the inspiration for Julian Morrow, had in the classes he taught, at least one of which included Donna Tartt. I need not rehash the entirety of the podcast referenced above--but taking a small moment here to acknowledge, it is a great podcast. Now it has supplemented two different reviews on this blog (The Shards being the other--and to get an idea of ranking and quality, I felt The Shards was pretty much as good as The Goldfinch, and it's lack of wider notice is likely due to Ellis's idiosyncrasies--but each is perhaps one step below The Secret History). Ellis is willing to talk to Anolik (the podcast creator), but Tartt is not. Ellis has his own podcast and multiple movies have been made of his books (The Shards will have its own series, I believe), and he sometimes makes bombastic posts on social media. Credit him with staying power, even if his relevance is perhaps 5% of what it was 35 years ago. Tartt knows it is better to exist in the shadows. Not unlike Goethe, who toiled over Faust for years in secret, despite being a god in Germany, Tartt may be polishing up her late era masterpiece, due in about 2040. We can look at her in awe. She's like the Fiona Apple of literature, except taking 2 or 3 times as long between projects, and more reclusive. Perhaps Thomas Pynchon is the better comp here. But he has been more prolific (is he, now that Kundera has passed on, the last of the greatest living writers, along with fellow-recluse-but-not-to-the-same-degree Don DeLillo? I'm not sure and I haven't really "gotten" his work but his influence has not abated.).
Tartt is not an iconoclastic artist in the same realm of Pynchon or DeLillo (or Salinger, another recluse with an even smaller oeuvre in terms of page numbers). White Noise is very accessible, and funny, but I think Tartt is much more accessible than either. Why The Secret History has not been made into a movie is a total mystery to me. It would make a great one. People still talk about it all the time. Regardless, there isn't anyone else like her. And this podcast is a great exploration of the mystery that surrounds her. She was likely upset by the investigatory nature of it. Because it does pull back the veil on this book in particular. It's quite fair to say, Tartt put a lot of herself into the main character and narrator (and though the podcast doesn't harp on it, I think she puts a lot of herself into Camilla as well). Apparently Tartt put Ellis in as Cloke Rayburn. Unfortunately, Brix Smith is difficult to identify.
It's just worth listening to because I don't think there has been another period like this for any group of artists since the Beats or the "lost generation" of expatriates in Paris in the 20's. I think a lot of us--in 2001, and still in 2025, I would imagine--that go to college wanting to be artists and writers want to believe that we and our friends are all going to be famous and great. There's something beautiful about this aspect of believing in oneself, and that these friendships lend one another power. Yet for many of us, it is a dream that is forsaken in the favor of practicality. We need to survive, so we go to law school, because we believe others when they tell us we are not good, or it is enormously difficult to make anyone else interested in our work. But back in the 80's, before the internet and the instant, global visibility of everything including criticism, we could dream a little more and believe we were special.
And so many of these Bennington students did just that, and this podcast is excellent for examining and understanding the reasons why. Brix Smith is just a lark here, since she did not become a literary icon, but arguably led as fantastic a life. No one could have imagined what her life would become, but obviously, for personal reasons, being a huge fan of the music she made with the band she joined--to say nothing of the fact that fate found her at the Metro in Chicago, in the days surrounding my very birth--her presence in this world is the final proof that this class was indeed special. Greatness emerged around everyone. I lament that I was not more aware of this facet to Bennington in 2000 (I was more aware of the Chris McCandless connection to Emory, spurring that particular rejected application), and instead chose to apply to similarly-sized Hampshire. And while NYU was probably the right choice for artists at the time, for many of us, and I have to think tens of thousands of others, the dream of art died after college. It took about five extra years to wither for me, and it still burns somewhere inside, but now instead, we admire those that were able to do something great and do what they love and live well enough off it to know that was their fate, that was their destiny, that was their calling, that was what they were meant to do in this life. Dreams at least can go on forever.
***
I haven't excerpted anything here yet, and this review is becoming too long, too precious for its own good, but at least one passage or snippet is necessary to illustrate the inimitable quality of Tartt's writing, this facility with language that is (deceptively) simple and precise and engaging and poetic, all at the same time. As noted, however, the book is very dialogue-heavy:
"'And it's a temptation for any intelligent person, and especially for perfectionists such as the ancients and ourselves, to try to murder the primitive, emotive, appetitive self. But that is a mistake.'
'Why?' said Francis, leaning slightly forward.
Julian arched an eyebrow; his long, wise nose gave his profile a forward tilt, like an Estruscan in a bas-relief. 'Because it is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he's worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep the will away entirely. For a warning of what happens in the absence of such a pressure valve, we have the example of the Romans. The emperors. Think, for example, of Tiberius, the ugly stepson, trying to live up to the command of his stepfather Augustus. Think of the tremendous, impossible strain he must have undergone, following in the footsteps of a savior, a god. The people hated him. No matter how hard he tried he was never good enough, could never be rid of the hateful self, and finally the floodgates broke. He was swept away on his perversions and he died, old and mad, lost in the pleasure gardens of Capri: not even happy there, as one might hope, but miserable. Before he died he wrote a letter home to the Senate. "May all the Gods and Goddesses visit me with more utter destruction than I feel I am daily suffering." Think of those who came after him. Caligula, Nero.'
He paused. 'The Roman genius, and perhaps the Roman flaw,' he said, 'was an obsession with order. One sees it in their architecture, their literature, their laws--this fierce denial of darkness, unreason, chaos.' He laughed. 'Easy to see why the Romans, usually so tolerant of foreign religions, persecuted the Christians mercilessly--how absurd to think a common criminal had risen from the dead, how appalling that his followers celebrated him by drinking his blood. The illogic of it frightened them and they did everything they could to crush it. In fact, I think the reason they took such drastic steps was because they were not only frightened but also terribly attracted to it. Pragmatists are often strangely superstitious. For all their logic, who lived in more abject terror of the supernatural than the Romans?'
'The Greeks were different. They had a passion for order and symmetry, much like the Romans, but they knew how foolish it was to deny the unseen world, the old gods. Emotion, darkness, barbarism.' He looked at the ceiling for a moment, his face almost troubled. 'Do you remember what we were speaking of earlier, of how bloody, terrible things are sometimes the most beautiful?' he said. 'It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripedes speaks of the Maenads: head thrown back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.'
We were all leaning forward, motionless. My mouth had fallen open; I was aware of every breath I took.
'And that, to me, is the terrible seduction of the Dionysiac ritual. Hard for us to imagine. That fire of pure being.'"
--------------- (40-42)
The line break there is worth noting. There are 8 chapters, a Prologue and an Epilogue, in nearly 560 pages. Sometimes books with very long chapters can be a slog, but there are probably hundreds of line breaks here, and this coupled with the heavy dialogue and propulsive narrative makes for a page-turner and relatively quick read.
That's about all I can say. It's not a perfect book, but it's a very good one, and while there may be other ones like it, I haven't seen them. The Little Friend will have to be added to the reading list. One hopes it will not take another ten years to remember to read it. By that time, who knows, we may have Tartt's true magnum opus. Because while The Secret History has remained popular and widely read and acclaimed for over thirty years, she is still out there somewhere, toiling in the shadows, and her greatest work may be yet to come. And maybe sooner than we think.
