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A review by hafsa
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
(05/02/2024) Well, I've upped my rating by a star on the reread. Not really because anything about the book changed; I suppose I've just become more accustomed to reading books with darker themes & tragedies in the meantime. I love how this book doesn't say a lot outright & is the victim of a very unreliable narrator; there's so much to theorise based on throwaway lines, and I love books like that. I also appreciated more the depth each characters are carefully given - though they're all terrible people I'd never want to encounter in real life, they make for interesting characters, and nothing about them is black & white.
(05/09/2018) I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I've never particularly enjoyed books that are filled with dark themes with nothing to lighten them, and when I finished this book I did not feel I had enjoyed it, but I did feel that I had just read a really good book.
I nearly dropped the book in the beginning - the pages and pages of heavy description put me off (though the descriptions themselves were well-written, I tended to forget them as soon as I had finished reading all the description and finally gotten to the plot); the characters I found pretentious and annoying; and there was no plot - in all those pages absolutely nothing had happened except the narrator had gone to university and signed up for a class.
I decided to read reviews of the book to figure out if I should continue reading, and realised a crucial detail - I had somehow missed reading the prologue! After reading it and returning to the story, the plot seemed a little more interesting, but the other factors hadn't changed. They wouldn't, through the course of the entire book; and yet somehow I found myself gripped by the story anyway. The characters remained pretentious and I hated some and didn't trust most, and yet I became invested in their stories; the descriptions didn't change in length but they became bearable, and then even enjoyable, though I still skimmed the really long pieces of text. The plot, however, was perfection.
I do wish the story could have had more female characters; there were two overall that had significance in the story, one who annoyed the narrator by wanting to sleep with him, and another who was never mentioned without the narrator wishing he could sleep with her. They had other characteristics, but these were the most mentioned.
Overall, I think this book was good, if not really my type of novel. I'm glad that I read it; any book that left me with enough thoughts to write this long, rambling review is a good book to have read, in my opinion.
(05/09/2018) I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I've never particularly enjoyed books that are filled with dark themes with nothing to lighten them, and when I finished this book I did not feel I had enjoyed it, but I did feel that I had just read a really good book.
I nearly dropped the book in the beginning - the pages and pages of heavy description put me off (though the descriptions themselves were well-written, I tended to forget them as soon as I had finished reading all the description and finally gotten to the plot); the characters I found pretentious and annoying; and there was no plot - in all those pages absolutely nothing had happened except the narrator had gone to university and signed up for a class.
I decided to read reviews of the book to figure out if I should continue reading, and realised a crucial detail - I had somehow missed reading the prologue! After reading it and returning to the story, the plot seemed a little more interesting, but the other factors hadn't changed. They wouldn't, through the course of the entire book; and yet somehow I found myself gripped by the story anyway. The characters remained pretentious and I hated some and didn't trust most, and yet I became invested in their stories; the descriptions didn't change in length but they became bearable, and then even enjoyable, though I still skimmed the really long pieces of text. The plot, however, was perfection.
I do wish the story could have had more female characters; there were two overall that had significance in the story, one who annoyed the narrator by wanting to sleep with him, and another who was never mentioned without the narrator wishing he could sleep with her. They had other characteristics, but these were the most mentioned.
Overall, I think this book was good, if not really my type of novel. I'm glad that I read it; any book that left me with enough thoughts to write this long, rambling review is a good book to have read, in my opinion.