Book Review: The Secret History
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
This 1992 'classic' isn't that good. It tells of an elite group of classics students at a 2nd tier college. They are cerebral, snotty and murderous. This is a collegiate tale of murder, remorse and ruminative whining. I did not care at all.
Best Lines:
“Make things unpleasant for any of you, if he chooses.”
“Repugnant miasma.”
“Always getting drunk and doing things like setting fires, or stuffing freshmen down chimneys, or throwing beer kegs through plate glass windows.”
“Not entirely with affection either,”
“Centuries dead.”
“This world in fact, was not their home.”
“Needlessly miserable.”
“Bunny's own hallowed Saint Jerome's was really only an expensive remedial school, the sort of place you see advertised in the back of Town And Country as offering specialized attention for the academic under-achiever.”
“Unpleasant recollections.”
“This does not make me of goood cheer.”
“Unavenged humiliations.”
“You people sure do a lot of sneaking around in the woods these days.”
“Somehow this did not elicit the dramatic response I expected.”
“Definitely not mixed up in drugs or anything like that.”
“Overwhelming, tragic motive.”
“Various unpleasant elements of his personality which heretofore hwe had only glimpsed had orchestrated and magnified themselves to a startling level of potency.”
“Behind that bluff facade some distinct and rather ominious changes were taking place.”