Revisited: Donna Tartt’s A Secret History

I decided to crack into A Secret History again on a whim. It was a brisk October afternoon. My girlfriend and I made the rare trek down our mountain to Thornwell Books, a cutesy bookstore/coffee shop in Morganton, NC. After perusing up and down the aisles, a “Hemmingway” latte in hand, I was disappointed by my increasingly heavy wallet. To leave a local bookstore without a book in hand—or at least without a cheesy tote bag—seemed a crime. Luckily, I found both.

The cashier smiled at the notorious cover of Donna Tartt’s genre-defining modern classic and knowingly said, “It’s the perfect time to read this.” I couldn’t help but agree. Revisiting The Secret History felt like diving into a long-held mystery of a book that had always intrigued me, but my original approach, years ago, felt half-hearted.

After reading a few chapters, I remembered why I couldn’t make it far in my first read. I remembered virtually nothing from this book, which made it all the merrier to rediscover how much I despise Tartt’s characters: her writing is beautiful through her lyrical poetry of description and her establishment of an intriguing yet equally subtle atmosphere. Tartt has a true talent for establishing a visceral presence; her ability to transport me into the bone-chilling winter of Vermont or roaming the autumn courtyards of Hampden College offered an engaging setting amidst her powerful and vivid descriptions and her methodical, if not a bit wordy, voice.

But her characters. God, her characters annoy the shit out of me.

I understand that it’s her intention, but I find myself befuddled when I stumble upon yet another TikTok discussing who may be the ‘real villain’ of The Secret History. Henry. Richard. Bunny. Julian.

Why not all of the above? As a matter of fact, how about every single character?

Charles is a violent drunk, Henry is a sociopath, Camilla is a manipulative enigma, Francis is predatory and downright insufferable, Bunny is a money grubber, and Richard is so staggeringly ignorant that his ability to overlook every flaw with any of them is a sin evil enough already. I believe Julian may be the actual villain readers so often overlook. He (and Henry) struggled so much after the revelation of what the group had done, but he was the one who taught them all how to do the bacchanal. He was the one who convinced his melancholic pupils that they were gods and that they would somehow find a way to live forever. And so, when faced with the realization of what he contributed to, he left.

Perhaps the greatest sin is Tartt’s affinity for indulgence in her scenes and chapters. Dozens of scenes could have been cut in the final edit and would have virtually no effect on the overall story. How many pages did I spend reading about Richard doing coke at a party, or Charles/Francis stumbling in drunk again (why does nobody lock their doors in this book?), or explanations of Bunny and Henry having lunch in Italy, Vermont, or New York, or wherever they decided they wanted to be at any given moment? How many hospital visits did I have to read through, or the near-endless descriptions of how cold it gets in Vermont for about twenty pages?

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to reread the genre-defining ‘dark academia’ book. My FYP is flooded with dark academic content, and I couldn’t help but indulge in it (I have always held a soft spot for the Greeks and depressing poetics). The overall aesthetic of the book, the setting Tartt has created, and the imagery she used to do so certainly did not disappoint.

I wish the characters weren’t so one-note. I wish Henry was more than just a sociopath who likes Greek, or that Richard was more than a helpless follower who did everyone’s bidding the entire time. I wish Tartt hadn’t brought in the Camilla-Charles plotline cause it did nothing, really, to benefit the overall story and just seemed more like a shock factor. The pacing was off. Once Bunny died, everything slowed to a point where the book's last pages fell into an absolute slog, and I glanced in anticipation at my next to-read book. I just had to get over the hill of all these haphazard kids staying at the house of their murdered friend’s parents or Francis and Richard helping Charles through whatever drunken spree he got himself into.

Richard’s blind devotion to the group seemed underdeveloped. I get that he felt like these people had affected him so much because he was now fashioning himself into the perfect murder accomplice. However, I still don’t understand his character motivation. Was it purely that he just wanted to be accepted in this group, was it for the love and study of Greek (which, for a book centered around a bunch of Greek majors, wasn’t used much past the first couple of chapters). Why did Richard follow around like a lost puppy dog when he could have quickly done the right thing and turned Henry in, thus avoiding Bunny’s death?

Bunny also seemed like the only solidly constructed character, so it felt like a part of the book died with me when they killed him. Maybe that was Tartt’s intention again, but Bunny felt way more developed than Richard. The Secret History is a story about Bunny Corcoran, told through the eyes of Richard whatever-his-last-name-was, who became the passive observer of two murders because of his incompetence. Tartt’s talent lies in her ability to craft a brilliant and enduring world that draws her readers in, even as her infuriating characters push them out.

Would I recommend reading The Secret History? Yes, absolutely. Tartt’s influence is prevalent in all other books of the dark-academia genre. Reading The Secret History in the subsequent books is unavoidable; Tartt laid the groundwork. Would I reread it? Well, I just did. It’ll probably be a while before I pick this one up again.