Picture of author.

Donna Tartt

Author of The Secret History

15+ Works 42,185 Members 1,507 Reviews 152 Favorited

About the Author

Donna Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi on December 23, 1963. She wrote her first novel while attending Bennington College, where she graduated in 1986. The novel, The Secret History, was published in 1992. Her other works include The Little Friend, which won the WH Smith Literary Award in show more 2003, and The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for Best Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013 and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence for Fiction. In 2014, Time named Tartt among their 100 Most Influential People. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Works by Donna Tartt

Associated Works

True Grit (1968) — Afterword, some editions — 4,265 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2006 (2006) — Contributor — 548 copies
National Gallery of Art, Washington (World of Art) (1992) — Introduction — 304 copies
Murder for Love (1996) — Contributor — 91 copies
The Best American Magazine Writing 2001 (2001) — Contributor — 65 copies
Deadlier: 100 of the Best Crime Stories Written by Women (2017) — Contributor — 19 copies
Fairy Tale Review: The Green Issue #2 (2007) — Translator — 18 copies
Fairy Tale Review: The Blue Issue (2006) — Contributor — 14 copies
A Portrait of Southern Writers: Photographs (2000) — Contributor — 13 copies
The Analog Sea Review: Number Four (2022) — Contributor — 2 copies

Tagged

2014 (164) 20th century (136) academia (187) America (126) American (290) American fiction (148) American literature (327) Amsterdam (168) antiques (131) art (426) audiobook (121) classics (135) college (326) coming of age (296) contemporary (168) contemporary fiction (194) crime (380) drugs (192) ebook (182) favorites (183) fiction (4,160) friendship (199) Kindle (204) Las Vegas (198) literary fiction (255) literature (290) murder (577) mystery (828) New England (187) New York (238) novel (618) own (185) Pulitzer Prize (165) read (454) Roman (203) thriller (265) to-read (2,792) unread (155) USA (287) Vermont (196)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name
Tartt, Donna
Legal name
Tartt, Donna Louise
Other names
Tartt, Donna Louise (birth name)
Birthdate
1963-12-23
Gender
female
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Greenwood, Mississippi, USA
Places of residence
Grenada, Mississippi, USA
Education
University of Mississippi
Bennington College
Occupations
writer
Awards and honors
WH Smith Literary Award 2003
Short biography
Donna Tartt (born December 23, 1963) is an American author. Tartt's novels include The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). Tartt won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch in 2014. She was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list.

Tartt was born in Greenwood, Mississippi located in the Mississippi Delta, and raised in the nearby town of Grenada. Her father, Don Tartt, was a successful local politician, while her mother, Taylor, was a secretary. At age thirteen, Tartt was published for the first time when a sonnet was included in a Mississippi literary review.

Tartt enrolled in the University of Mississippi in 1981, where her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss writer-in-residence, admitted the eighteen-year-old Tartt into his graduate course on the short story. "She was deeply literary," said Hannah. "Just a rare genius, really. A literary star."

Following the suggestion of Morris and others, she transferred to Bennington College in 1982. At Bennington, Tartt studied classics with Claude Fredericks.

In 2002, Tartt was reportedly working on a retelling of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus for the Canongate Myth Series, a series of novellas in which ancient myths are reimagined and rewritten by contemporary authors. In 2006, Tartt's short story "The Ambush" was included in the Best American Short Stories 2006.

Tartt is a convert to Catholicism and contributed an essay, "The spirit and writing in a secular world", to The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture (2000). In her essay Tartt wrote that "...faith is vital in the process of making my work and in the reasons I am driven to make it". However, Tartt also warned of the danger of writers who impose their beliefs or convictions on their novels. She wrote that writers should "shy from asserting those convictions directly in their work".

Members

Discussions

Thriller - group of friends killed their friend in Name that Book (October 2020)
The Goldfinch SPOILERS ALLOWED in Girlybooks (August 2014)

Reviews

everyone's said everything about this book already. its a banger and was great to re-read after actually going to college in New England. is it bad that Bunny's funeral is the funniest scene in the whole book?
 
Flagged
griller02 | 551 other reviews | Mar 18, 2024 |
Dark academia, social commentary of the upper class and its penchant for debauchery, atmospheric historical fiction with a hint of fantasy.

In other words, The Secret History is what I wanted Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo to be.
 
Flagged
boopingaround | 551 other reviews | Mar 6, 2024 |
Donna Tartt, a writer of prodigious talent, again takes a decade to write a novel north of six hundred pages; of course its ambitious. Opening with a scenario reminiscent of 9/11, its two main themes would seem to be the emotional damage inflicted on survivors (here, Theo, a boy of 13 at the time of the bombing) and the role of art, of beauty, in the world (here represented primarily in the painting The Goldfinch by Fabritius).

Certainly Tartt develops these themes with great skill. Yet as a reader I feel some frustration from the fact that there is a third theme, that of the powerfully bonded adolescent friendship and its later evolution, that I wish had received more of Tartt's attention and development.
Such was my mistaken first impression of the only friend I made when I was in Vegas, and - as it turned out - one of the great friends of my life.
His name was Boris. Somehow we found ourselves standing together in the crowd that was waiting for the bus after school that day.
"Hah. Harry Potter," he said, as he looked me over.
"Fuck you," I said listlessly."
Boris is the Polish/Ukrainian son of a violently alcoholic single father. He and Theo, both emotionally damaged and largely on their own, survive together on the desert, and deserted, outskirts of Vegas, in a miasma of vodka, cocaine and scrounged/stolen food. Their relationship sometimes seems to spin outside the bounds of the merely platonic. When Theo's negligent father is killed, he runs away back to New York where he lived with his mother prior to the terrorist act that took her from him. He urges Boris to come with him, but this does not end up occurring. Their parting, though not likely intended to be by Tartt, strikes me as the emotional center of the novel, she writes it so powerfully.
"But the guy said as long as the money in my fund was used for education - it could be anybody's education. Not just mine. There's more than enough for both of us. Though, I mean, public school, the public schools are good in New York, I know people there, public school's fine with me."
I was still babbling when Boris said: "Potter." Before I could answer him he put both hands on my face and kissed me on the mouth. And while I stood blinking - it was over almost before I knew what had happened - he picked up Popper under the forelegs and kissed him too, in midair, smack on the tip of the nose...
"Good luck," said Boris. "I won't forget you." Then he patted Popper on the head. "Bye, Popchyk. Look after him, will you?" he said to me.
Later - in the cab, and afterward - I would replay that moment, and marvel that I'd waved and walked away quite so casually. Why hadn't I grabbed his arm and begged him one last time to get in the car, come on, fuck it Boris, just like skipping school, we'll be eating breakfast over cornfields when the sun comes up?...
More than anything I was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state I'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing I'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street - which was, of course, I love you.
It will be a decade until Boris comes back into the picture, apparently driven by a mixture of devotion and guilt that he feels towards Theo. By this time Boris is some sort of mid level gangster figure in the Russian underworld and he is eager to lead Theo on a sketchy quest towards what he believes will be a great reward. Theo, unhappily engaged to a beautiful but cold society girl and still dealing with personal demons, allows himself to be dragged along despite misgivings, and nearly to the doom he has been circling around since that day when he was 13 years old.
… (more)
 
Flagged
lelandleslie | 795 other reviews | Feb 24, 2024 |
Apparently when planning out this novel Donna Tartt said to herself, "I'm gonna characterize the FUCK out of these people", and so for over 550 pages of the hardcover edition, she did. Imagine a classical music composer largely eschewing melody in the creating of a lengthy symphony, though obligatory nods in that direction are included, but creating a work with astounding orchestral colorization. So it is here with Tartt, plot, and characterization. It will frustrate and annoy many. It did me when I didn't feel quite in the mood for it in these few weeks it took me to go through it, when I was thinking that a melody with a nice hook sure sounded appealing. Having finished it now and with the whole piece in mind, I'm left thinking how impressive the achievement is, and what a great talent Tartt has.… (more)
 
Flagged
lelandleslie | 158 other reviews | Feb 24, 2024 |

Lists

2010s (1)
1990s (1)
Romans (1)
Crime (1)
AP Lit (1)

Awards

You May Also Like

Associated Authors

Statistics

Works
15
Also by
13
Members
42,185
Popularity
#408
Rating
3.9
Reviews
1,507
ISBNs
319
Languages
24
Favorited
152

Charts & Graphs