The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Apr. 13th, 2026 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sholioI saw this in the bookstore on Friday while I was idly browsing for something to buy so I didn't just walk out with my drink from the cafe and nothing else, and I remembered that I had meant to read this for a while. By Sunday night, I was done with all 500+ densely typed small-print pages.
I needed something different from the light, forgettable books I've read so much of in the last few months, and this definitely filled that need. It was absolutely immersive in the best way. The writing is gorgeous, not just on the wordcraft level (although that, too; this book is a lavish feast of description) but also thematic and structural and just generally ... good! Good in the way where you feel that every choice was deliberate, every thematic styling meaningful. It was a really good book about incredibly compelling, terrible people. I did almost nothing on Saturday except read this book.
Also, in a twist that will surprise no one, it made me think of Babylon 5 in a couple of very specific ways. I'll put that at the end.
The other thing it reminded me of was The Great Gatsby, which .... knowing that the book is almost 40 years old and has been widely dissected, I don't know if this is something that's been talked about to death (is it widely known by basically everyone that it's sort of a Gatsby retelling? is that like the most obvious of obvious comparisons) but in any case, it was a similar reading experience (for me) of being slam-dunked into a world of terrible rich people who I want nothing more than to follow and find out what new entertainingly terrible thing they'll do next.
Also, the narration is lovely. This book has some shatteringly beautiful descriptions of fall/winter/spring in New England.
( Spoilers galore, I mean really, so many spoilers )
( Babylon 5 vs The Secret History )
I needed something different from the light, forgettable books I've read so much of in the last few months, and this definitely filled that need. It was absolutely immersive in the best way. The writing is gorgeous, not just on the wordcraft level (although that, too; this book is a lavish feast of description) but also thematic and structural and just generally ... good! Good in the way where you feel that every choice was deliberate, every thematic styling meaningful. It was a really good book about incredibly compelling, terrible people. I did almost nothing on Saturday except read this book.
Also, in a twist that will surprise no one, it made me think of Babylon 5 in a couple of very specific ways. I'll put that at the end.
The other thing it reminded me of was The Great Gatsby, which .... knowing that the book is almost 40 years old and has been widely dissected, I don't know if this is something that's been talked about to death (is it widely known by basically everyone that it's sort of a Gatsby retelling? is that like the most obvious of obvious comparisons) but in any case, it was a similar reading experience (for me) of being slam-dunked into a world of terrible rich people who I want nothing more than to follow and find out what new entertainingly terrible thing they'll do next.
Also, the narration is lovely. This book has some shatteringly beautiful descriptions of fall/winter/spring in New England.
( Spoilers galore, I mean really, so many spoilers )
( Babylon 5 vs The Secret History )
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