Laura’s Favourite Book #7: The Secret History
Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside 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
Why The Secret History?
Well, this is embarrassing. Last January or February, a friend of mine, who has a tendency to give me books (which is great), gave me some. Including The Secret History. I was sceptical. It was a bit big. Looked a bit ‘literary’. Worthy. Dry. Not my kind of thing. I read the other books she’d given me first and then…
And then I read it. And I’ve read it at least five times since then. The mastery involved in this tale unfolding – if I produced a book like The Secret History, I’d only be putting out one novel a decade too.
Story
As usual: spoilers may be abound. After all, I can’t not at least allude to the eponymous secret history.
Our narrator, Richard Papen, outlines his fairly parochial younger years in California before leading us back to the most pivotal moment of his life: his time as a student at a slightly esoteric, very elite college in Vermont.
When one of his friends, Bunny, was murdered.
By Richard and their other friends.
The story is divided into two halves that remind me of some of the scariest rollercoasters: the first part ramps up the tension as we begin to understand why these socially awkward Classics students would even want to kill one of their own and then, at the midpoint, when Bunny’s left for dead at the bottom of a ravine…
All bets are off.
There is no control in the chaos that follows, no matter how they all try, because it’s one thing trying out Ancient Greek rituals for the craic and it’s another to try to get away with cold-blooded murder in 1990s New England.
And just like the best Greek tragedies, there’s pathos, catharsis, and hubris – and the survivors will never truly recover from what happened that Spring in Vermont.
Character
Richard’s an interesting narrator and ostensible protagonist, in the sense of he’s so boring. As I said earlier, his formative years were mundane, so much so that he does his fair share of embellishing his Californian childhood until it sounds vaguely Hollywood. I’d put him in the same category as the second Mrs de Winter: they’re our way into a fascinating, often claustrophobic world populated with far more interesting, complicated people. Again, like the second Mrs de Winter, Richard is out of his depth, having had to fight his way into Hampden College in the first place before having to convince Julian to let him on his course.
The fact is, Julian, and Richard’s supposed friends/peers, are in a different class in more ways than one. I often see people forget that The Secret History is even set in the early Nineties, because the group are so out of time. It’s only when we see Richard interact with the likes of Judy Poovey, i.e. his ‘own’ people, that we remember that no, this is not Brideshead Revisited, despite how Henry, Francis, Charles, and Camilla dress and behave.
I always find it interesting that by the end of the book, Richard seems relieved to be spending time with Judy and her friends, because they are refreshingly uncomplicated. After all, they’re more interested in the next party than holding bacchanals and covering up suspicious deaths.
Because the fact is, Richard’s classmates dazzle him: he’s always one step behind their latest machinations (of which there are many) and he’s only included in the plot to kill Bunny at pretty much the last moment, which renders Richard quite the unreliable narrator. In fact, even at the end, there’s still something…
Lingering.
Setting
I love New England.
Honestly, any stretch of the East Coast between Maine and Washington DC, yes.
In my opinion, Vermont (which is where Tartt herself studied) is one of the most perfect locations in the US for The Secret History. Its age and history are in stark contrast to the newness of Richard’s new-build West Coast town, adding to the general mystique of Richard’s friends. It’s the classic Hero’s Journey: entering the world of the unknown.
And the New England winter Tartt outlines is palpable and biting, further pushing the sense of Richard’s alienation and overwhelm – it’s all inherently Gothic.
A Coldharbour Winter
Now that Coldharbour II: The Dead Land has been officially announced, here’s a sneak peek at how punishing winter can be on the North Sea…
They followed the long path towards the mausoleums, where weeping angels stood stiff and cold under the grey clouds.
“Don’t vampires hang around boneyards?” Elizabeth replied. “If you can think of a better way to start than by looking for disturbed graves, be my guest.”
“I’ll take the left,” Alex said, stepping off the path, “you take the right?”
Elizabeth nodded and slipped away between the gravestones as if she was used to hanging around boneyards just as much as vampires were. But then she had been buried in one, briefly, back in the Twenties, although how anyone had been meant to know that her Master Power was resurrection …
From the frost-gripped gravel rose rows upon rows of stones, some bone-bleached and bird-plopped, others grey and pockmarked by that mysterious acid rain they used to bang on about in school, and a fair few gleaming granite black. But the further Alex wandered and meandered and wound her way off the paths, the more the sense grew that she was somehow caught in an enormous chess board, ready to be plucked by unfeeling fingers, but if this wasn’t real, if this was just how it was before, the paranoia, things that could be seen but not believed—
She tripped over a tree root, hissing as her knees smacked against hard grass.
When Elizabeth called her name, she yelled back that she was fine.
Twice in one morning.
Distracted and sleep-deprived. That was all.
Coldharbour II: The Dead Land comes out on Halloween. Read the first in the series, Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death, now.
