My family passed out the second we got to the hotel room in Edinburgh, so I went to a museum by myself. I would’ve called the plot patient, had I started writing a review of the book then and there.īut I didn’t. Jet-lagged and hungry, the drugged-out and three-piece-suited ambience of Hampden College dazzled me.

If I could go back in time, I’d spill a thousand crumbs between the pages of “The Secret History.” Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t sleep for either that first seven-hour flight or the following hour-and-a-half flight to Edinburgh, but I was hooked on the first hundred pages of the novel. Then a flight attendant came around with a tray of cookies, and, not wanting to get crumbs in the spine of my book, I started watching “The Office” on a screen a couple of rows ahead of me. My head bent over the seatback table, the reading light annoying my neighbor, I devoured the first fifty pages. It’s a wonderful introduction to the voice and vibes of the story. Tartt tells us the secret, as it were, on the very first page. Here’s the first sentence: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” I admit that the novel opens in such gorgeous, immediate, clear prose that criticizing the book as a whole feels somewhat monstrous. So, on a seven-hour flight to Amsterdam last August, I pulled a used, deceptively slim copy of “The Secret History” out of my backpack and set to work. I want to feel that seductive rush of smug pride when someone mentions a popular book in conversation and I’ve read it cover to cover. It’s because two out of every 10 posts my books-focused Instagram algorithm shoves down my throat have a caption like, “Ten Books You HAVE to Read in 2023: ‘The Secret History,’” or, “Dark Academia lovers, I have the perfect book for you!”Īnd I want to be an up-to-date, informed reader. And you might wonder why I’m reviewing this book now, 31 years after it was first published.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt