The Not-So-Secret History
Ada Lambert | September 27, 2023
In celebration of the upcoming fall season, I read the popular dark academia novel that is circulating in the booktok community right now: “The Secret History,” by Donna Tartt. I will preface this review by saying I had to stop reading this book before bed because I would stay up thinking about what would happen next, running through questions in my mind about what it means. It is an ode to the Classics, to the small part of the human brain that champions evil, to beauty and destruction, to a love that is crooked and singular. This book is one of its own, and hardly describable, but I will give it my best.
“The Secret History” begins on a cold April afternoon, with four friends crouched in the bushes, waiting for a character known as Bunny. This is not truly where the story starts, more so a revelation that comes about halfway through the book. The importance of the prologue is that it reveals to us, the readers, that Bunny is found dead in a ravine, and our unnamed narrator has something to do with it. The rise and fall of this action is where the excitement lies.
“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
Richard Papin, the narrator, is from a small town in California and was born to a blue-collar family. Papin has dreams of going to university, but his family does not support his wishes, nor do they pay him much mind at all. After an unfulfilling year of community college, Papin applied to Hamden College, a small liberal arts school in rural Vermont. He receives a generous scholarship from the school and sets off with nothing to lose.
When Richard arrives, he inquires about the classics department. In his year of community college, he studied Greek, which piqued his interest in the subject. He learns that the classics department is led by one professor, the cold yet charming, Julian Morrow. Julian’s teaching style requires that he administer all of his students' courses and that only a select few can partake in this intimate group.
Though Richard lacks the sophistication and wealth of these students, he makes multiple attempts to join which eventually grants him his spot, after realizing that all he has to do is act like he comes from a high-class family. The group consists of six students: Richard, Henry Winters, Bunny Corcoran, Francis Abernathy and then the twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay.
Richard is a type of unreliable narrator because of his true background – he romanticizes everything they do because, to him, they are the picture of success. They have all these things that were previously unattainable to Richard, which is invigorating and new. He is initially awestruck and blind to their strange quirks, but this slowly changes as he becomes more integrated into the group.
“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don't know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen.”
Spoilers ahead
Deeply infatuated with Greek and Roman mythology, the group (excluding Richard) set out to experience what was known as the bacchanalia in ancient times. These ceremonies were rituals in which participants ingested intoxicating substances to induce a trance-like, uninhibited state. They consumed copious amounts of alcohol and other drugs in order to remove their inhibitions so they could return to their most natural selves.
This is the point at which Richard starts growing suspicious, as they come home with mysterious scratches and bruises. They spend a large majority of this time in the countryside at a home that Francis has rented out.
They are not successful in achieving this state right away. It takes a few strenuous months, and at last, they decide they must leave Bunny behind because he has a knack for interfering with the ritual.
The night they set out without Bunny, it works. They describe the experience as if they were animals, rampant and crazed in the night. In their psychosis, they accidentally mutilate a chicken farmer and leave his dead body in the woods.
In absolute shock and horror, they devise a plan to clean themselves up before sunrise. They go back to one of their apartments and there, slumped on the table, is Bunny, who had suspected they’d ditched him the night before. As soon as the door opens, Bunny awakens and is appalled at the sight of his friends.
Bunny, being the token naive and goofy character, is initially tricked into believing they’d hit a deer — but after the news breaks about the dismembered farmer, he is not so sure. He jokes about it for months, teasing the group about that night and using it as a way to feed off their wealth, particularly Henry. At last, on their trip to Rome that Bunny had blackmailed Henry into, Bunny goes behind his back and reads his journal, discovering that it is true.
The aftermath is where things head south — Bunny tortures the group, making insane demands and requesting large sums of money whatever chance he gets. This becomes so tortuous that they devise a plan to kill him…and make it look like an accident.
Despite all the evidence pointing to his murder, you still can’t help but wonder in the pages leading up to his death if it will actually happen. I hoped that somehow, some way, one of them would intervene. I was tricked into believing that these characters were good people at heart. That’s what is so haunting about this novel. They’re all morally corrupt, even Richard. He goes along with all this even though there is a small conscious voice in the back of his head telling him “No, there is another way.” Richard is so infatuated with these people that he cannot possibly see another option until Bunny’s corpse is settled in the ground and he realizes the gravity of taking a life.
Tartt is such a talented writer that I felt as if I had participated in the murder. The ultimate betrayal to a friend. There is a part of the novel where they all go to stay with Bunny’s family the night before the funeral, per the request of Bunny’s father. Nobody suspects them of course, they made it look like an accident. They watch this family grieve, and they grieve with them. It’s not the same though. They are collapsing under the weight of their actions. They underestimated the aftermath and they crumbled as a result.
The following two hundred pages after Bunny’s funeral hold the ultimate self-destruction of each character. As they unravel, Richard catches the lies and deceit he’s been fed for months. Each character becomes more whole, in the worst way. It’s like the saying “too good to be true.” Richard begins to loathe and despise his friends, particularly Henry, who always seems to fall at the center of every issue.
They eventually all turn on each other. The most jaw-dropping part of this entire book for me was learning that Camilla and Charles have an incestuous relationship that nobody really talks about, but everybody is aware of. Richard discovers this much later than the rest, in which he is completely shocked, but even he is not quite disgusted by it. More curious than anything else. This is where I started to recognize that these characters do not clearly understand their own morality. It makes sense, given their romanticization of Greek and Roman mythology, but to those on the outside looking in, it feels absurd that they all continuously go on as if everything is fine.
I will spoil the ending here, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read this!
The final climax of the story is when Julian discovers a letter in his mailbox with ramblings of fear and paranoia– at least that is how it appears to him. The pages are typed, which is unlike Bunny to begin with, inciting confusion in Julian. He meets with Henry to discuss the letter and he notices the letterhead on the back is from the exact hotel in Rome that Henry and Bunny had stayed at. Julian puts the pieces together instantly but does not respond. Instead, he hands the letter back, leaves the office, resigns from his job, moves from his home, and never speaks to the group again.
Henry is destroyed by this loss, as Julian had been a father figure to him. The others are sad but more so for the consequence of losing a professor who taught within a completely different system, therefore making their degrees meaningless and setting them back three years.
In the finale of this sequence, Charles goes to confront Henry at the Albemarle, where Camilla is staying. Henry had been staying with her, and though it was not explicitly stated until the end, Henry and Camilla were in love.
Here, Charles pulls a gun on Henry and attempts to shoot him. In the grapple for the gun, Richard is shot instead. They also fire at the window, shattering the glass, in which they ask “What are we going to do about the window?” Richard sees them as they are at that moment. “What about me?” he asks. “I’ve been shot.” The hotel owners are banging on the door, threatening to kick it in, when Henry motions Camilla over.
He kisses her on the head, “I love you,”
“Henry, don't do this.”
Before anyone can stop him, the gun is to his temple. He fires two shots.
He somehow managed to live for 12 hours, when the injuries sustained should have killed him instantly.
There is an epilogue, but it goes without saying none of them are the same after this. They all grapple with depression, regret and guilt. Francis even tries to kill himself and fails. This story does not have a happy ending, but that was never the point.
“Beauty is terror”
I held off on finishing this novel for quite some time. I thought about it each day, yet I couldn’t bring myself to come to the close. I wanted it to continue on and on, but eventually, I just had to know what happened. I do not often feel so invested in a story, but Tartt writes in such a way that you feel entirely immersed in the story. She explores the gray area in which these characters exist within, and in turn, you are forced to as well.
With Richard being the narrator, there is much that the reader does not know because he does not know until much later what all his friends are actually about. He is constantly left out of the loop until it is no longer convenient for him to not know. They only told him what was going on when they needed to make sure there would be no interference with Bunny’s murder.
This book is mindlessly thought-provoking, twisted, existential, and compelling. No review could possibly do it justice. You have to experience it for yourself.
To purchase the book, click here.