The Secret History 1992
By Donna Tartt
- Fiction, College students, Teacher-student relationships, Classicists
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.
- Bleak ending
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Character
Grave, earnest, bleak and intimate.
- gravecomic
- earnestironic
- warmbleak
- intimateepic
- cooloverwhelming
Who loves it, who doesn't
11 profiled raters. Loved most by The Empaths.
Where do you stand?
Answer first; then see how everyone, and your circle, split.
“Is this Donna Tartt's best work?”
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“Is The Secret History too earnest?”
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“Would a little humor have helped?”
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Ask the title
A yes-or-no question, answered from what people wrote here, on TMDB and on Wikipedia. Never made up.
Reviews
We read them all: the case against is yuki.reads's. Marked below.
- yuki.readsThe case againstThe Empath★★★★½
Overlong in the middle and I did not care.(1 spoiler sentence hidden; tap to read)
- amara.readsThe Empath★★★★
Tartt writes sentences like a person who has read Greek and wants you to know. It is a great pleasure and a slightly lesser book than its reputation.
About the book
- Author
- Donna Tartt
- First published
- 1992
- Pages
- 608
- Publisher
- Goldmann Verlag, Flamingo, Random House Audio
- Editions
- 52
- Language
- Dutch, Italian, Chinese, German
- ISBN
- 9789650713058
Where to read
Libraries first: a card gets you most books for nothing. Each opens that service’s page for this title.
On Open Library, 152 have read it and 1,768 want to.
“DOES SUCH a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?”
Donna Tartt is an American author who has achieved critical and public acclaim for her novels, which have been published in forty languages. Her first novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992. In 2003 she received the WH Smith Literary Award for her novel The Little Friend, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction for her novel The Goldfinch.
Pairings
Companions we picked from the closest works, and how to take them.
Similar in taste
Closest on the same fourteen dimensions, from everything scored on Curator Co. Other media included when they land close.
Never Let Me Go 200568% alikeBoth grave, earnest, bleak.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous 201961% alikeBoth earnest, grave.
Normal People 201861% alikeBoth earnest, grave; this one is more contemporary.
Beloved 198759% alikeBoth earnest, grave, bleak.
A Little Life 200858% alikeBoth earnest, grave, bleak.
Klara and the Sun 201956% alikeBoth earnest, grave.
The Remains of the Day 198955% alikeBoth grave, earnest; this one is more nostalgic.
Pachinko 201755% alikeBoth earnest, grave; this one is more epic.
Our Mother's House 196788% alikeFilm · Both grave, earnest.
Dolores Claiborne 199584% alikeFilm · Both earnest, grave, bleak.
