The Secret History – Donna Tartt Review

Exploring Donna Tartt’s acclaimed campus novel, The Secret History, with insights into intellect, morality, and human obsession.

You know, The Secret History is one of those books that everyone in the literary world seems to talk about. If you’ve ever gone down a YouTube rabbit hole on academic writing or “dark academia,” you’ve probably seen this title pop up. It’s often said to be one of Donna Tartt’s finest works — right alongside The Goldfinch.

What stands out about Tartt is her extraordinary ability to build environments that feel both real and unsettling. The college setting in this story is almost like a living character — every hallway, every shadow, feels alive with thought and tension. You can smell the autumn air, hear the old pages turning, and sense that something beneath all the beauty is beginning to crack.

Rain McNeil captured this so beautifully in her reflection. She said that The Secret History isn’t just a novel about murder or academia; it’s really a meditation on the seductive nature of intelligence — how knowledge itself can become intoxicating. She talks about how the story mirrors that feeling of being both included and alienated when you’re part of something too rarefied, too cerebral. And that’s such a striking observation — because this book truly is about belonging and estrangement, about what happens when intellect loses its moral compass.

When I read Tartt, I always feel this quiet hum underneath her words — a sense of danger wrapped in elegance. The prose is rich, deliberate, and deeply psychological. It’s not just a story you read; it’s one you inhabit, slowly, until you realize it’s inhabiting you.

So if you’re drawn to stories that combine philosophy, beauty, and human fragility — or if you simply love that dark academic atmosphere — The Secret History will pull you right in.

And I’d really love to hear from you — has this book haunted you too? Because that’s the thing about Tartt: her stories don’t quite end. They just linger.

Reading 1

This was a tale that told itself simply and well: the loose rocks, the

body at the bottom of the ravine with a clean break in the neck, and

the muddy skidmarks of dug-in heels pointing the way down; a hiking

accident, no more, no less, and it might have been left at that, at quiet

tears and a small funeral, had it not been for the snow that fell that

night; it covered him without a trace, and ten days later, when the

thaw finally came, the state troopers and the FBI and the searchers

from the town all saw that they had been walking back and forth over

his body until the snow above it was packed down like ice.

It is difficult to believe that such an uproar took place over an act for

which I was partially responsible, even more difficult to believe I

could have walked through it—the cameras, the uniforms, the black

crowds sprinkled over Mount Cataract like ants in a sugar bowl—

without incurring a blink of suspicion. But walking through it all was

one thing; walking away, unfortunately, has proved to be quite

another, and though once I thought I had left that ravine forever on

an April afternoon long ago, now I am not so sure. Now the searchers

have departed, and life has grown quiet around me, I have come to

realize that while for years I might have imagined myself to be

somewhere else, in reality I have been there all the time: up at the top

by the muddy wheel-ruts in the new grass, where the sky is dark over

the shivering apple blossoms and the first chill of the snow that will

fall that night is already in the air.

What are you doing up here? said Bunny, surprised, when he found

the four of us waiting for him.

Why, looking for new ferns, said Henry.

And after we stood whispering in the underbrush—one last look at

the body and a last look round, no dropped keys, lost glasses,

everybody got everything?—and then started single file through the

woods, I took one glance back through the saplings that leapt to close

the path behind me. Though I remember the walk back and the first

lonely flakes of snow that came drifting through the pines, remember

piling gratefully into the car and starting down the road like a family

on vacation, with Henry driving clench-jawed through the potholes

and the rest of us leaning over the seats and talking like children,

though I remember only too well the long terrible night that lay ahead

and the long terrible days and nights that followed, I have only to

glance over my shoulder for all those years to drop away and I see it

behind me again, the ravine, rising all green and black through the

saplings, a picture that will never leave me.

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.

Reading 2

Late that afternoon, Charles and I were sitting on the porch. It had

turned suddenly cold; the sky was brilliantly sunny but the wind was

up. Mr. Hatch had come inside to start a fire, and I smelled a faint

tang of wood smoke. Francis was inside, too, starting dinner; he was

singing, and his high, clear voice, slightly out of key, floated out the

kitchen window.

Camilla’s cut hadn’t been a serious one. Francis drove her to the

emergency room—Bunny went, too, because he was annoyed at

having slept through the excitement—and in an hour she was back,

with six stitches in her foot, a bandage, and a bottle of Tylenol with

codeine. Now Bunny and Henry were out playing croquet (kroh-KAY) and she was

with them, hopping around on her good foot and the toe of the other

with a skipping gait that, from the porch, looked oddly jaunty.

Charles and I were drinking whiskey and soda. He had been trying

to teach me to play piquet (“because it’s what Rawdon Crawley plays

in Vanity Fair”) but I was a slow learner and the cards lay abandoned.

Charles took a sip of his drink. He hadn’t bothered to dress all day.

“I wish we didn’t have to go back to Hampden tomorrow,” he said.

“I wish we never had to go back,” I said. “I wish we lived here.”

“Well, maybe we can.”

“What?”

“I don’t mean now. But maybe we could. After school.”

“How’s that?”

He shrugged. “Well, Francis’s aunt won’t sell the house because she

wants to keep it in the family. Francis could get it from her for next to

nothing when he turns twenty-one. And even if he couldn’t, Henry has

more money than he knows what to do with. They could go in

together and buy it. Easy.”

I was startled by this pragmatic answer.

“I mean, all Henry wants to do when he finishes school, if he

finishes, is to find some place where he can write his books and study

the Twelve Great Cultures.”

“What do you mean, if he finishes?”

“I mean, he may not want to. He may get bored. He’s talked about

leaving before. There’s no reason he’s got to be here, and he’s surely

never going to have a job.”

“You think not?” I said, curious; I had always pictured Henry

teaching Greek, in some forlorn but excellent college out in the

Midwest.

Charles snorted. “Certainly not. Why should he? He doesn’t need

the money, and he’d make a terrible teacher. And Francis has never

worked in his life. I guess he could live with his mother, except he

can’t stand that husband of hers. He’d like it better here. Julian

wouldn’t be far away, either.”

I took a sip of my drink and looked out at the faraway figures on

the lawn. Bunny, hair falling into his eyes, was preparing to make a

shot, flexing the mallet and shifting back and forth on his feet like a

professional golfer.

“Does Julian have any family?” I said.

“No,” said Charles, his mouth full of ice. “He has some nephews but

he hates them. Look at this, would you,” he said suddenly, half rising

from his chair.

I looked. Across the lawn, Bunny had finally made his shot; the ball

went wide of the sixth and seventh arches but, incredibly, hit the

turning stake.

Reading 3

I had never been in Julian’s house, had never even seen it, though I

assumed the rest of them had been there a hundred times. Actually—

Henry being of course the notable exception—Julian did not allow

many visitors. This was not so surprising as it sounds; he kept a gentle

but firm distance between himself and his students; and though he

was much more fond of us than teachers generally are of their pupils,

it was not, even with Henry, a relationship of equals, and our classes

with him ran more along the lines of benevolent dictatorship than

democracy. “I am your teacher,” he once said, “because I know more

than you do.” Though on a psychological level his manner was almost

painfully intimate, superficially it was businesslike and cold. He

refused to see anything about any of us except our most engaging

qualities, which he cultivated and magnified to the exclusion of all

our tedious and less desirable ones. While I felt a delicious pleasure in

adjusting myself to fit this attractive if inaccurate image—and,

eventually, in finding that I had more or less become the character

which for a long time I had so skillfully played—there was never any

doubt that he did not wish to see us in our entirety, or see us, in fact,

in anything other than the magnificent roles he had invented for us:

genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus—

smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, well-educated, and rich. It was his odd

blindness, I think, to all problems of a personal nature which made

him able at the end to transmute even Bunny’s highly substantive

troubles into spiritual ones.

I knew then, and know now, virtually nothing about Julian’s life

outside of the classroom, which is perhaps what lent such a

tantalizing breath of mystery to everything he said or did. No doubt

his personal life was as flawed as anyone’s, but the only side of

himself he ever allowed us to see was polished to such a high gloss of

perfection that it seemed when he was away from us he must lead an

existence too rarefied for me to even imagine.

So naturally, I was curious to see where he lived. It was a large

stone house, set on a hill, miles off the main road and nothing but

trees and snow as far as one could see—imposing enough, but not half

so Gothic and monstrous as Francis’s. I had heard marvelous tales of

his garden, also of the inside of the house—Attic vases, Meissen

porcelain, paintings by Alma-Tadema and Frith. But the garden was

covered with snow, and Julian, apparently, was not at home; at least

he didn’t answer the door.

Henry looked back down the hill to where we waited in the car. He

reached into his pocket for a piece of paper and scribbled a note that

he folded and wedged in the crack of the door.

“Are there students out with the search parties?” Henry asked on the

way back to Hampden. “I don’t want to go down there if we’ll be

making ourselves conspicuous. But on the other hand, it does seem

rather callous, don’t you think, to just go home?”

He was quiet a moment, thinking. “Maybe we should have a look,”

he said. “Charles, you’ve done quite enough for one day. Maybe you

should just go home.”

After we dropped the twins off, the three of us went on to campus. I

had expected that by now the search party would have grown tired

and gone home but I was surprised to find the enterprise busier than

ever. 

There were policemen, college administrators, boy scouts,

maintenance workers and security guards, about thirty Hampden

students (some in an official, student-councily-looking group, the rest

just along for the ride), and mobs of townspeople. It was a large

assembly, but as the three of us looked down at it from the top of the

rise, it seemed oddly muffled and small in the great expanse of snow.

We went down the hill—Francis, sulky because he hadn’t wanted to

come, followed two or three paces behind—and wandered through

the crowd. No one paid us the least bit of attention. Behind me I

heard the indistinct, aborted garble of a walkie-talkie; and, startled, I

walked backward into the Chief of Security.

“Watch it,” he shouted. He was a squat, bulldoggish man with liver

spots on his nose and jowls.