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The Secret History

Donna Tartt
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The Secret History

Donna Tartt
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Overview

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Overall rating: 4.507307 / 5 from 479 reviews.

AI Generated Review Summary

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is highly acclaimed for its compelling characters, exceptional writing, and captivating story. Customers praise it as a brilliant and well-paced novel, often highlighting its status as a future classic and a remarkable psychological thriller.

Summary topics

  • Novel (6%): Customers keep praising the novel, describing it as brilliant, excellent, and one of the best modern novels.
  • Characters (18%): Based on many customers, Donna Tartt's book is highly praised for its excellent characters and realistic interactions.
  • Writing (10%): Customers raved about the book, describing it as absolutely beautifully written and well-paced.
  • Story (11%): Customers appreciated the captivating story of a group of college students who get caught up in a murder.
  • Readability (21%): A significant number of customers pointed out that this book is an amazing read and a future classic.

Review topics: [expectations, feel, cover, book, pleasure, read, characters, writing, novel, story, written, academia, plot, vibes, thriller, classic, author, writer, paced, imagery, friend, words, details, tale, literature, group, prose, goldfinch, donna tartt, fall].

Review highlights

  • "The writing is beautiful and thoughtful, and the characters are complex and mysterious." — Scooby
  • "Excellent writing and character development are a must in any good book." — Lorna T.
  • "Donna Tartt’s writing style is fantastic, I have now added all her books to my next up list!" — Cassie Q.

Reviews

6 ⭐️

"I think this is my new favourite book. This book is dark academia, intellectual, and absolutely brilliant when you do the background research (after reading)"

— Katy P. (5/5)

Classic

"Fav book. Just immaculate vibes really and that sums it up"

— Sar6 (5/5)

Standout Novel

"I absolutely love her style of writing. This story is suspenseful and keeps you guessing until the end. Left such a lasting impression on me."

— Jennifer (5/5)

Gift

"Got for a gift but sounds like it would be interesting."

— Blue (5/5)

Standout Novel

"I absolutely love her style of writing. This story is suspenseful and keeps you guessing until the end. Left such a lasting impression on me."

— Jennifer (5/5)

richard is an outsider

"richard is an outsider until he makes a life that gets him into the inner circle of some rich kids studying greek classics. the picturesque eventually stops complementing their college experience and begins to juxtapose the ominous acts of the group. the book's plot is concerned not so much with the act of committing murder, but the true cost of such an action. i enjoyed the prose. it goes into detail, but if the goldfinch was comparable to someone thinking a constant stream of consciousness out loud, the secret history is sitting across someone and having coffee as they tell the story of a memorable time in their life. . i thought richard was an unreliable narrator. i had a hard time believing him and, because i see them through his eyes, the rest of the group. the only character i actually liked was francis. i usually don't like ambivalence in a book, but i think it fits well in this one as it adds to the complexity of the characters. there is so much discussion to be had, which makes it a great pick for a book club or as a buddy read. it's not my absolute favourite book, but it's definitely one that's left a mark on me. there are so many layers that i don't think it's possible to catch them all in a single reading. i know that it's a book i'll want to reread every few years or so."

— Libraryofamisfit I. (5/5)

Gift

"Got for a gift but sounds like it would be interesting."

— Blue (5/5)

Great gift idea

"I got this book for my daughter for her birthday present because she has been wanting to read it for a while. It was a big hit! She was surprised and excited about it."

— V. W. (5/5)

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

"Super great read! A bit dense, and one of those books where the author maybe didnt know where to """"end,"""" but also full of characters and a world that you can get lost in. Loved the unreliable narrator aspect to the story, and how the characters slowly descend into themselves to the point where any of their objectives seem justifiable."

— Soph (4/5)

Recommend

"An amazing read! Would recommend. Beautifully written and very immersive."

— Kair (5/5)

Q&A

  • Published date: Apr 13, 2004
  • Language: English
  • No. of Pages: 576
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • ISBN: 9781400031702
  • Dimensions: 5.2" W x 1.0" L x 7.95" H
"A beautifully written story, well-told, funny, sad, scary, and impossible to leave alone until I finished. . . . What a debut!" —John Grisham
"Powerful . . . Enthralling . . . A ferociously well-paced entertainment." —The New York Times

"An accomplished psychological thriller . . . Absolutely chilling . . . Tartt has a stunning command of the lyrical." —The Village Voice

"A smart, craftsman-like, viscerally compelling novel." —Time

"A thinking-person's thriller . . . Think Lord of the Flies, then The Rules of Attraction. . . . The Secret History combines a bit of both--the unmistakable whiff of evil from William Golding's classic and the mad recklessness of priviledged youth from Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the '80s. . . . As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed." —New York Newsday

"Tartt's voice is unlike that of any of her contemporaries. Her beautiful language, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and intellectual energy make her debut by far the most interesting work yet from her generation." —The Boston Globe

"A long tale of friendship, arrogance, and murder knit together with the finesse that many writers will never have . . . Her writing bewitches us . . . The Secret History is a wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin." —The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The great pleasure of the novel is the wonderful complexity and the remarkable skill with which this first novelist spins the tale. And a gruesome tale it is. . . . A great, dense, disturbing story, wonderfully told." —Cosmopolitan

"The Secret History implicates the reader in a conspiracy which begins in bucolic enchantment and ends exactly where it must--though a less gifted or fearless writer would never have been able to imagine such a rich skein of consequence. Donna Tartt has written a mesmerizing and powerful novel." —Jay McInerney

"Donna Tartt has invested this simple and suspenseful plot with a considerable amount of atmosphere and philosophical significance. . . . She's a very good writer indeed." —The Washington Post Book World

"A glorious achievement . . . The Secret History is a grand read--an artful blend of intelligence, entertainment, and suspense that quickens the pulse." —The Virginian Pilot & Ledger-Star

"Beautifully written, suspenseful from start to finish." —Vogue

"One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace. . . . Immensely entertaining." —Houston Chronicle

"Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer. . . . The cadence of her sentences, the authority with which she shaped 500-plus pages of an erudite page-turner indicate she has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road. . . . The decision to murder has about it the inevitability of classical Greek tragedy." —The Miami Herald

"Donna Tartt has a real shot at becoming her generation's Edgar Allan Poe. . . . The Secret History pulses like a telltale heart on steroids." —Glamour
Donna Tartt is the author of the novels The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch. Her work has been published in forty languages and her third novel, The Goldfinch, was awarded the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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