A Dumb Reader's Guide To: The Secret History

I first picked up Donna Tartt's The Secret History after my wife, who had read it twice, recommended it to me. The Secret History is a first person narrative, presumably written years after the events in the book. The narrator, named Richard Papen, reflects on his years at a small, elite Vermont college, and specifically about the circumstances of the murder of a fellow student, named Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran. While the murder is revealed at the beginning of the novel, there are few details given.

As the story progresses, Richard speaks of his personal experiences as a transfer student from California adjusting to life in Vermont, and how he has come to associate with a group of Greek scholars studying under an obscure professor. As Richard's relationship with his fellow Greek students evolves, a pattern begins to emerge that leads the reader to understand why Bunny is murdered. After Bunny's murder, Richard goes on to explain the destructive consequences on the rest of the students in his clique.

In The Secret History, Donna Tartt explores several interesting themes, including literary beauty versus reality, social constraints versus a longing for liberation, and the truths that lie behind social structures. Donna Tartt does a very good job in unraveling the plot, like critic A.O. Scott describes, "as a murder mystery in reverse." However, an impressive feature is that Tartt's choice for Richard's clique to be a group of students studying Greek tragedy closely parallels the story's development in a way similar to that of a Greek tragedy.

Donna Tartt does a good job of keeping the reader interested in the narrator's character development, as well as the development of the other primary characters, while keeping the plot moving in a manner that will surprise the reader until the final pages of The Secret History. I highly recommend The Secret History to any person who studies or has an interest in classic literature.

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