Cannonball Read 3 Review #13 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is a unique novel, a sort of calm and detached telling of a group of strange college students to do evil things. The story is narrated by Richard, a transfer to the fictional Hampden College in Vermont. He itches to get away from his depressing town of Plano, California and get away from his cold parents, so he heads to Hampden, a small liberal arts college in a small Vermont town. He immediately notices a small, close-knit group of students who study Greek and the classics with a strange professor, Julian, who has no small amount of influence on his students. Richard manages to ingratiate himself to Julian and the others, and is allowed in the small, six-person program. He becomes a part of this eccentric group of students and is involved in the murder of their friend, Bunny, which I'm not spoiling, as he mentions it in the first page of the novel. The novel is split into two books, and we know going into it that the group murders Bunny, so the first half is the events that lead up to the murder, and the second half is what happens to the group in the aftermath of their crime.

The novel is an interesting one, as it is not in the form of a typical murder mystery. As I mentioned, we know up front that the group kills their friend Bunny, so the only suspense is wondering why it happens and what happens to everyone afterwards. Though it is never specifically stated, the novel takes place in the 1980s, but the students at the center of the novel have this strange, old-world vibe, and this cold, disaffected air so that the reader is never comfortable with them and never connects with their motivations. It's a picture of how cool and capable evil can be, how seductive and calculating. Only in the aftermath of this horrible act does the reader, and our narrator, really start to understand the scope of what happened and become horrified with how we were lead astray. It was an unexpected book, and I think Donna Tartt is a wonderfully capable storyteller. I'm excited to talk about it with my book club.