I really resent the time I spent on this book. I don't know what I was thinking. I had read a couple hundred pages of this book on a trip a few years ago and never got around to picking it back up afterward, so I never finished it. It has such a reputation as a landmark literary mystery, the kind that always gets shelved in Fiction or even Literature and never in a bookstore's Mystery ghetto, and though I remember the experience of reading it the first time being almost as annoying as it was engrossing, I decided to pick it up again. The two main reasons I had were the two books I had just read--Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, and The Likeness by Tana French. Both books feature a strangely tight-knit, cerebral, elitist group of friends with a surrounding murder mystery--clearly these authors both owed something to this famous book by Donna Tartt. And having loved both of these books (the first as a throughly literary read, the second as an astonishingly well-drawn mystery novel), I felt compelled to go to the source. Boy, do I regret that decision. I'm not saying it was an entirely unenjoyable read. It is engrossing, it does have its moments of good writing and haunting mystery. But mostly it's just lurid trash disguised as literature by its numerous quotations in classical Greek. Its plot is thoroughly improbable, its characters are flat cardboard cutouts of human beings that walk around like zombies drinking, smoking, and doing drugs with ever-increasing voraciousness to the point where you have to wonder if they are in fact robots because it's the only possible explanation why they're all not dead yet. In the end, I don't know whether to blame my hatred for this book on the author or on the hype. I've certainly read and forgiven the faults of thinner mystery novels than this one, but this book has been wrapped in so much pretentious hype, that it can only end up looking like complete garbage on closer examination. ( )

Awesome read. Excellent character development, I was very torn about how to feel about the characters. I sympathized and hated them at the same time. It's definitely a very dark, twisted, intricate work of art, but does not disappoint! ( )

This is one of my all-time favorite books. I've read it numerous times since it first came out and I enjoy it every single time and every single time I am so sorry to finish it. It belongs to what I think of as a trio of books about school along with Waking the Moon by Elizabeth Hand and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. Let me be clear - these books are nothing alike - the only thing they have in common is their college setting. In a way, though, they are alike - they each deal with Dionysian events and their consequences in closed and exclusive college settings.

The Secret History isn't so much a whodunit as a whydunit - you know the who immediately, the why is somewhat more mysterious (and in many ways is never fully revealed). I love the sweeping romanticism of this book - set at fictional Hampden College in the eighties. I was in college at the same time and some of the characters are familiar - the punk rockers, the druggies, the incredibly annoying hippies. Our hero is a California transplant, at college on scholarship and thrust into a small group of privileged students studying the Classics with the enigmatic Julian Morrow.

This is a winter book - cold at its heart, colder in its setting. There are deaths and funerals and philosophizing - lots of masks constantly worn. At its center is the narrator, Richard, and his love of the picturesque and Henry, who may or may not be a psychopathic killer. In this reading I found Julian Morrow to be the most chilling character - he is the old man in the road with the answers you probably won't like once you get them.

If you haven't read this, it's worth reading. Donna Tartt is a good writer and a good storyteller (a worthwhile combination). It takes her forever to write a book (this one took 8 years). Her second book, The Little Friend, is an odd Southern gothic that I also enjoyed, although it doesn't have the staying power of the first. It was 10 years between the first and second novel. Her third novel is due out in 2012. I'll be interested to see how she gets past her sophomore slump. ( )

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 ( )