I waited and waited for an adequate explanation of exactly *why* the main characters fall into such depravity, but a plausible reason was never forthcoming. I found the author's explanation to be very, very weak. Basically, "antiquity made me do it..."?

It is also obvious that the author knows very little about the protestant mainline. WASPs are protestant; that's what the P stands for. And we don't call a priest "Father", and we don't use Holy Water, especially not to sprinkle on graves! I found these details irritating. Bunny's family was portrayed as a weird amalgam of Catholic/Protestant and it was very disconcerting.

Overall, however, the book is a worthy read simply because of the detailed dynamics of the friendships and enmities as well as the descent into suspicion, loathing and paranoia. There is a great deal of human complexity on view here and I enjoyed Tartt's writing style. ( )

I loved this book and could not put it down. The suspense built slowly and the characters were complex and interesting. A great read ( )

Proof of the author's skill at crafting a suspenseful tale is that the murder is revealed on the first page, yet I read on. Nor are the main characters particularly appealing, but I allowed myself to become absorbed in their solipsistic, arrogant world nonetheless.
Greek classicism is really just an intellectual prop for the students to appear aloof - this is not a novel of ideas per se. There is one or two references at the beginning about Greek ideas underpinning the bacchanal that kills the farmer, but, again, these are not essential to the story, just an exotic way to do a killing and accentuate the overinflated sense of superiority these students have.
I was waiting for the professor Julian Morrow to be fleshed out more, or at least to hear some of his profound utterances that made him such a figure of respect and awe for the students, but the reader is denied any real flashes of wisdom. Even Henry, a genius at translation, seems oddly ordinary in his speech.
Despite it's length, I can see why people re-read this, for the first time the plot pulls you forward. I imagine subsequent readings would allow the reader to pay attention more to the friendships, the moments where decisions are made, and the gestures that point to greater turmoil, for it is a novel of great attention to detail and luxuriates in creating atmosphere.
Other mediums have done similar tales with much greater tautness - Hitchcock's thrilling Rope springs to mind, while the charm and faint menace behind Henry's self assuredness reminded me of Patricia Highsmith's writing.
Despite my quibbles, I felt real pleasure reading this. Yes, they are dreary uni students who spend their days smoking, drinking and staring out from rain drizzled windows, but the world Donna Tartt creates is a richly textured one and I appreciated the ride on this different kind of thriller. ( )

I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed reading this book. The plotting and story telling are excellent - the apparent longeurs and diversions (college parties, the narrator's near death experience, everyday life in the wealthy Connecticut set) work well with the inexorability of the plot - though the end feels melodramatic, that is nonetheless appropriate - how many Greek tragedies end without bodies littering the stage in all sorts of imaginative and inevitable attitudes? None of the characters are 'likeable'; but the adolescent pretentiousness and snobbishness is rounded with a sympathy for the foibles of youth. The inevitable echoes of Brideshead are nicely undercut with the world of the modern campus novel; overblown sentimentality never gets away with it.

For many, college would seem a waste of time. There are many disciplines to follow that would not lead directly to a job. However, whatever the degree, the college experience is mostly a discover of self. Who are you, who will you be? In Donna Tartt's book, the same delimna holds forth. Richard Papin doesn't know who he is and what he does know of himself, he would prefer to erase. When he leaves his droll California town for East Coast and New Hampshire, he wants to escape himself. He also has no direction in his college studies. He decides to take Classics as his major. The professor seduces him into taking only course from him so that he and his five other classmates may be taught in the ancient Greek way (similar to the days of Plato). His classmates decide to re-enact a Dionysis orgy and as a result, murder an innocent man. When another classmate discovers them, he threatens to reveal their secret. As a result, they plan his murder.Favorite quotes: 'It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.'...When I walked home at night, things got white around the edges and it seemed I had no past, no memories, that I had been on this exact stretch of luminous, hissing road forever....But one mustn't underestimate the primal appeal - to lose one's self, lose it utterly. And in losing it be born to the principle of continuous life, outside the prison of mortality and time. ...Henry, who generally disliked and was disliked by hoi polloi a category which in his view expanded to include persons ranging from teenagers with boom boxes to the Dean of Studies of Hamp den, who was independently wealthy and had a degree in American Studies from Yale - nonetheless had a genuine knack with poor people, simple people, country folk; he was despised by the functionaries of Hampden but admiredby its janitors, its gardeners and cooks. Though he did not treat them as equals - he didn't treat anyone as an equal, exactly - neither did he resort to the condescending friendliness of the wealthy. 'I think we're much more hypocritical about illness, and poverty, than were people in former ages,' I remember Julian saying once. 'In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true. Does anyone remember Plato's definition of Justice in the Republic? Justice, in a society, is when each level of a hierarchy works within its place and is content with it. A poor man who wishes to rise above his station is only making himself needlessly miserable. And the wise poor have always known this, the same as do the wise rich.'...He hadn't seen it coming at all. He hadn't even understood, there wasn't time. Teetering back as if on the edge of the swimming pool: comic yodel, windmilling arms. Then the surprised nightmare of falling. Someone who didn't know there was such a thing in the world as Death; who couldn't believe it even when he saw it; had never dreamed it would come to him. (I liked this one because it reminded me of the Odyssey. When Odysseus begins to kill his rivals, the first one is written quite poetically, "Did he dream of death?") ( )