The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. In this brilliant debut novel, Donna Tartt gives us a richly textured and hypnotic story of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance. Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life — in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable. Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another … a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life … and lead to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning …
eMusic Review 0
04.17.09
Donna Tartt, The Secret History
2009 | Label: HarperAudio
A breathless debut novel that carries the weight of Greek tragedy
Donna Tartt’s The Secret History is often described as a murder mystery, but its structure is hardly typical of the genre. Neither a whodunit nor a trial drama, the novel reveals from the beginning that a boy named Bunny is dead, as well as the circumstances of his murder. The mystery is what motivates five rational, seemingly good people — undergraduate Greek scholars no less — to commit such a brutal act and, perhaps more importantly, how they weather the consequences. The reading — or listening — experience is more akin to a Greek tragedy; one already knows of horrors to come and waits, breathlessly, for them to unfold.
The melancholic narrator, Richard Papen, applies on a whim to a New England college, hoping desperately to escape the drab surroundings of suburban California and indifferent parents. He soon enrolls in a highly selective Classics program, concentrating on Greek with five other students who study almost exclusively under the mentorship of the charming and vaguely sinister Julian Morrow. When Richard learns that several members of the class have participated in a deadly Bacchanal, it draws him into a plot to murder Bunny in order to bury the secret.
In the audio version, Donna Tartt breathes more nuance and dimension into her characters. Bunny, in particular, springs to vivid life. His “loud and honking” voice — like “W.C. Fields with a bad case of Long Island lockjaw” — is one thing when merely imagined from descriptions on the page, but quite another to actually hear. At first, it jars and irritates, then endears, before turning simultaneously pitiful and menacing in the final days of his life. When he stumbles, drunkenly, into Richard’s room to unload his deadly secret about the Bacchanal, his slurred and desperate speech stabs at the heart. One feels the essential evil of his murder more acutely for having heard him speak. Julian, meanwhile, sounds as childlike and charming as a Disney character, qualities which serve to amplify a certain predatory streak.
The result feels like riveting testimony that sends a chilled hush through the court; we all know how the story ends, but we still want to hear it.
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A Wonderful Book!
Tartt does a splendid job reading this book, with voices for all the characters (most of whom are male.) I've spent years buying second-hand copies and pressing this book on friends. A tiny group of Classics students at a small New England college do something very, very bad -- and, in a way, it destroys them all. (However, by the time Bunny dies you will want to kill him too: Tartt layers exasperation on exasperation.) The only Classics-soaked book (aside from the glimpse of a Fury at the end of one of Mary Renault's books) that makes my hair stand on end and which evokes the awe, the foreknowing, and the horror of the Classical tragedies. Well drawn characters, ironic humor, a mystery, and a story that grows richer the more you know about Classics.
