A review of The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is a crime novel with a difference. Author Donna Tartt reveals who is going to die in the opening pages; she also allows the narrator to explain how the victim died and who killed him.

The rest of the novel is an explanation of how the victim, Edmund ‘Bunny’ Corcoran came to meet his end at the hands of a group of friends.

The setting is a university in New England, America, a place where narrator Richard Papen has gone to escape his working class and dismissive Californian parents. He is a scholarship student, but tries to hide his humble background and yearns for the sophistication and easy lifestyle of others living at college.

He is admitted into a set of Greek classes taught by a brilliant and eccentric classics professor, Julian Morrow (try not to think The Chaser!), who handpicks his students and then supervises all their learning. Julian is modelling his teaching methods on Aristotle and Plato, with just six students, or disciples.

The five other students all seem wealthy, intelligent, aristocratic, self-assured. However, one of Tartt’s major themes is that appearances can be deceiving. Every person has a flaw, a secret to hide. Slowly Richard is tested, and then absorbed into this privileged inner circle.

Even so, there are events and activities that are hinted at, which he stumbles across, and slowly he discovers that the class has moved beyond simply academic learning. Julian Morrow encourages them to think and act, as well as read Greek, and to fashion their lives around Greek sensibilities.

However, ancient Greek morals were very different to our own, and the sexual and religious exploration of the students leads to a situation spiralling into chaos. When this is mixed with the accepted drug and alcohol abuse of campus life, the results are deadly.

Tartt has introduced so many ideas into this novel. Richard’s favourite book is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and there are many echoes: a young man lying to raise his social status and caught up in events beyond his control. There is also a beautiful, yet unattainable woman who is unbearably sweet to him.

The critical moment is when the students seek to receive the god Dionysus in a ritual read about in class. They experiment with methods of cultic purity and mind alteration, and sacrifice.

It is clear that these students have moved to a state where moral boundaries have slowly shifted, such that they feel they are beyond the rules that apply to other mere mortals.

Although these characters act in extraordinary ways, this subtle progression into deeper and deeper wrongdoing, with increasing consequences for themselves, others and their community, is characteristic of all of us if we don’t have our consciences sharpened by God’s Word.

Richard is at first appalled by what he discovers, but has worked so hard to be accepted by the others, that he becomes complicit in the intrigue. He justifies his behaviour by fatalism, or a higher motive; “I was in the position, I realised to put an end to this now, right here... if I pretended I knew what I was doing I might be able to talk him out of it.”

How often do we get caught up with events and remain too cautious, or too silent, when we could have intervened.

John Mullan wrote in The Guardian: “We know that Bunny will be murdered by his friends, and we must understand why. The novel's greatest success is to let you see how it has to be. Slowly and carefully, justifying her prologue, Tartt makes him a person you might almost want to kill.”

This is a chilling thought; that we can get to the point where we can understand, almost condone murderous tendencies, especially if there has been no suffering that we can empathise with. What has happened to the morals of our society where it is acceptable to dispose of someone because they might harm our potential, by making us face the consequences of our actions.

Tartt explores morality from many angles, with Julian Morrow dismissing the Judeo-Christian tradition as a “degenerate cult carried to extravagant lengths”. There is humour in her consideration of religious options, again through Morrow:

Well, whatever one thinks of the Roman Catholic Church, it is a worthy and powerful foe. I could accept that sort of conversion with grace. But I shall be very disappointed indeed if we lose him to the Presbyterians.

Tartt’s writing is mature, confident and assured. This is an intelligent novel with a compelling plot. Richard is excellently defined, but some of the other characters remain shadowy.

One criticism is that this book seems to vacillate in historical context. There are references to movies from the 80s, hippies that echo 60s/70s, and drugs from the 90s. This is a minor distraction.

Ultimately this is a novel about what happens when we treat our teachers and mentors as if they are divine, and the disappointment of discovering the fallibility of every human being, including ourselves. When Richard is finally faced with the consequence of his lack of voice - his guilt by both action and inaction - his instinctive response is to appeal to God, and seek forgiveness.

As a character comments later, Morrow has focused the students on Art and Beauty, but chosen to ignore things equally as important. Our society also can be lured by distractions, to the point of imbalance. Sometimes it takes a flood, or a cyclone, or a fire, or cancer, to shake our complacency and self-absorption.