Hello,
Hope everyone is healthy and safe. During these weird times, I’m trying to read more fiction books. If you have any requests or recommendations let me know.
Stay safe everyone,
mariana
Why did I read this book?
I met my friend Jill almost two years ago at work. We quickly connected over books and many other things. She’s one of the most avid readers I know, and I always enjoy her book recommendations. She’s also an amazing illustrator, so make sure to check out her website!
A few weeks ago, we had tea and she gave me a copy of A Secret History by Donna Tartt for my birthday. Last week, I had a bit of time off, so I devoured it. I found it very entertaining and intense, in a way that it helped me disconnect from all the other news we’re currently flooded with. Thank you so much, Jill!
What is the book about?
Murder: The first page of the book starts with a murder scene, the rest of the book revolves around this. It’s an intense and dark story. I won’t give away any more details to avoid spoilers.
A group of friends who love Greek philosophy: The story revolves around five young individuals that become friends, and their professor. They all have in common a bit of a weird obsession with the Greeks. While they’re all eccentric in their way, I found none of the characters particularly likeable. I wonder if the author did this on purpose since this adds a fascinating flavour to the story.
Ethics in the context of belonging: How do we treat the members of our group when we no longer want to hang out with them? How far are we willing to push our luck and ignore our common sense in order to belong?
‘We don’t like to admit it,’ said Julian, ‘but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people — the ancients no less than us — have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self. Are we, in this room, really very different from the Greeks and the Romans? Obsessed with duty, piety, loyalty, sacrifice? All those things which are to modern tastes so chilling?’
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Why should you read it?
Get distracted and immersed in a shocking story: The book hooked me from the beginning until the very end. I appreciated having my mind being so absorbed by something so well thought through.
If crime stories are your thing: If you like suspense and crime novels, you’ll probably enjoy getting to the bottom of this murder. This is not a novel full of guns and violence, rather it’s a story of interesting philosophical beliefs leading to a murder.
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things — naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror — are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realisation dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself — quite to one’s surprise — in an entirely different world.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Links to buy the book
Amazon UK
Kindle edition £6.99
Paperback £7.37
Amazon US
Paperback $5.15
Kindle Edition $8.53
Amazon MX
Pasta blanda $411.22
//As an Amazon Associate I earn a commission from qualifying purchases via the above links.//
Favourite quotes
//The purpose of this section is to share some of my favourite book bits, so you can come back to them when you finish a book, if you wish to do so. I’ve put in bold my favourite ones, in case you want to read a few (or all) ahead of the book.//
For this particular book, I added the quotes that I liked or found interesting. I don’t necessarily agree with all of them, and when you read the book, it will be more clear why.
“On leaving home I was able to fabricate a new and far more satisfying history, full of striking, simplistic environmental influences; a colourful past, easily accessible to strangers.”
“...he began by talking about what he called the burden of the self, and why people want to lose the self in the first place.”
“But isn’t it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”
“And how did they drive people mad? They turned up the volume of the inner monologue, magnified qualities already present to great excess, made people so much themselves that they couldn’t stand it.”
“Yes, but as Old Cephalus once heard Sophocles say, the least of us know that love is a cruel and terrible master. One loses oneself for the sake of other, but in doing so becomes enslaved and miserable to the most capricious of all the gods.”
“Death is the mother of beauty.”
“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
‘We don’t like to admit it,’ said Julian, ‘but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people — the ancients no less than us — have civilized themselves through the willful repression of the old, animal self.’
‘Because it’s dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channelling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue.’
“I guess when uptight people like that get mad, they get really mad.”
“Nothing is lonelier or more disorienting than insomnia.”
“I suppose there is a certain crucial interval in everyone’s life when character is fixed forever; for me, it was that first fall term I spent in Hampden. So many things remain with me from that time, even now: those preferences in clothes and books and even food — acquired then, and largely, I must admit, in adolescent emulation of the rest of the Greek class — have stayed with me through the years.”
“Sometimes when there’s been an accident and reality is too sudden and strange to comprehend, the surreal will take over.”
“The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant -- the idea was so truly heavenly that I’m not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did.”
“Besides, I think it’s good to change the place where one sleeps from time to time, I believe it gives one more interesting dreams.”
“After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great.”
“One’s thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain commons ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.”
“In America, the rich man tries to pretend that the poor man is his equal in every respect but money, which is simply not true.”
“I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.”
“Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
“Reason is always apparent to a discerning eye. But luck? It’s invisible, erratic, angelic.”
“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things — naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror — are too terrible to really ever grasp at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory, that the realisation dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself — quite to one’s surprise — in an entirely different world.”
‘When you’re worried about something,’ said Henry abruptly, ‘have you ever tried thinking in a different language?’
“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty — unless she is wed to something more meaningful — is always superficial. It is not that your Julian chooses solely to concentrate on certain, exalted things; it is that he chooses to ignore others equally as important.”