When I recommend Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” to friends I tell them, “I regret reading this book because I will search the rest of my life for a novel as utterly brilliant, and I will be unable to find it.”
I’ve read this book three times, and I’m still nervous to write a review for it because I feel I cannot do it justice. “The Secret History follows a group of brilliant, and often pretentious, classics students at Hampden College. This book questions the bounds of morality and presents the effects of obsession, corruption, and betrayal in a tight-knit group of friends, leading — inevitably — to murder. I despise the concept of “dark academia,” but if you’re looking for a great fall book to bury yourself into, I recommend letting “The Secret History” forever taint your soul.
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside of literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” – Donna Tartt, “The Secret History”
