Last month I read a particularly entertaining book---The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It's an old book published in 2004--eleven years! It was on my To-Read list for quite a while, but I never seemed to get to it until recently. Now I’m glad I did; it’s one of those books that drones on like a great-uncle hard of hearing, and after sticking with it for a while it just suddenly swings you around by your neck, like a seal waving a penguin around. Okay, maybe not that, but you get what I mean.
Plot: Richard Papen, a Californian kid comes to Hampden, Vermont for college. He enrolls into a elite Greek program with the highly selective old professor to study Classics. Eventually he’s accepted into the little clique of students, Henry, Charles, Camilla, Francis, and Bunny. Alcohol, cigarettes and esoteric discussions. Talk about Greek life. They have a period of harmonious and fun-on-the-beach friendship, then the book takes a nosedive into the bizarre. Bacchanal involving drinking and a dead Vermont farmer and leaked secrets. Tension stews in the little circle and their camaraderie eventual collapses into bits. And then BAM, an unexpected ending.
Character: One of the best things about this book is its character development. At the beginning, all Richard can see is a bunch of glossy trust-fund kids drinking and smoking. As the book progresses, he begins to see the real nature of each one of them. Bunny, especially, grows from a nice, goofy guy into a cunning, money-sucking parasite who thrives on jabbing at the insecurity of others. Each chapter brings a new layer to the characters, new secrets they hide. Donna Tartt emphasizes on the complexity of human nature and that none of us are completely evil or good. Even when Richard hates Bunny the most, he still has moments of déja vu in which the old Bunny and the new, twisted one are indistinguishable. Francis is my favorite character in the book entire due to the fact he never once betrays Richard’s trust and is always up front with him. Henry Winter, another important character in the book, is also interesting to read. First introduced as a quiet, somewhat aloof, and highly intellectual person (really, think Sherlock Holmes in college without all that deduction skillz), he shows his warm side to nature (rose-bushes and his garden) and the protagonist when he takes Richard into his own home when he has nowhere to go. Later on, however, he becomes so calloused and calculating to the point Richard no longer knows whether or not to trust him. Weirdly enough, he claims to have led a gray life up till the murder. Then he feels the world changes into a sharper, more colorful hue. I think he is the most extraordinary character in the whole book.
In the characters we see the intricacy of human nature and its clueless ugliness. During their plotting and secrecy the characters lose what’s left of their innocence and candidacy to face others and themselves. The Secret History also explores the theme of life and making choices. At one watershed point in the book the main character thinks “who ARE these people anyway? What am I doing with them?” and realizes he can simply walk away and escape all the drama and anguish he knows he’s diving into. Instead he stays and gets his guts torn by his decision (literally). We all have moments that define and even decide the course of our lives. Sometimes we feel like there’s only one way and we just have to do something. That’s not true. We always have a choice, and it’s our own reluctance to follow that particular path that lead to our final destination. God always leaves a way out for us, and it’s only our fault if we choose to ignore it and head for destruction. Seeing this can help us face our own fault instead of blaming it on circumstances. I love how Donna Tartt explores this theme and how she points out our active role in making the right choices.
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