Towards the end of the Summer, perhaps after so much 'Summer reading', I was slowing down and failing to fully engage with the books that I was reading. I felt that I needed something really engrossing and plot-driven to draw me back into the world of fiction. Actually, perhaps I just needed to read some non-fiction for a while but I tried to think about the books that were renowned for being unputdownable. The Secret History, a book I'd always meant to read, was hailed by people I knew as just such a book. Readers who had an academic background in literature, as well as friends I knew who had never read many books at all, were all agreed; The Secret History was a book to make you forget the real world. I had previously read Donna Tart's second novel, The Little Friend, and had responded to it, I think, like many people. It was a highly accomplished coming of age novel set in small-town America. But that is not how the story is initially offered up. From the opening scenes, the reader is lead to believe that we will, by the end of the novel, discover the great mystery of a young child's death that has rocked this small community. And we don't. The literary world felt robbed of a sufficient denouement. However, I think what Donna Tart was doing with The Little Friend was attempting to right some of the wrongs of The Secret History. On balance, I would say that her latter offering is the better written novel.
Firstly, there are too many characters in The Secret History. There is no general rule for how many central characters a novel should have. If there was, Tolstoy would've broken said rule. But weakly drawn characters who exist as plot devices should be kept to a minimum or done away with completely. Of the six main characters, I would say that at least three of them are completely two dimensional. The short-hand for these characters' personalities is that one is gay and the other are a brother and sister twin duo, possibly involved in an incestuous relationship. That little bomb shell is dropped in at the end, presumably in order to keep you interested in these empty characters. Incest, unless you're writing a novel about incest, is a rather desperate attention-grabbing sub-plot but to call it a sub-plot is generous. It is thrown into the narrative as if as an afterthought towards the end of the novel; it makes sense of nothing, and if The Secret History were an essay it would be like breaking that cardinal rule of... don't introduce a new idea in the conclusion.
Another peculiarity of the book is how few female characters there are. The incestuous twin is the only main female character and as I have ventured, not a fully realised character, although we are meant to view her sympathetically. All the other vey minor female characters are unlikeable. I can't think of a male author writing a book mainly peopled with female characters. Presumably this was deliberate and experimental but as characterisation is such an area of weakness in this novel, it may be one of the reasons that the book doesn't hang together cohesively. If we can agree that these characters are surplus to requirements then it is fair to deduce that they exist to pad out the text. If a writer sets out to write a psychological thriller, they really ought to read Patricia Highsmith first. They would then understand that pacing your plot is not the same as padding out your plot. If, after reading Ripley or Strangers on a Train, you come to the conclusion that you cannot get under the skin of your characters, certainly not enough to persuade your readers that your characters should get away with a crime, then go away and work out where your writing skills lie. To be fair, I think that's what Tart did which is why she came back with The Little Friend. Her central character in that book, the child, Harriet, comes to life fully on the page and we care deeply about her safety throughout some frightening experiences. However, in The Secret History, I wanted the lot of them to be caught. That weird group of implausible students who were meant to be so clever but always seemed so obtuse; we were meant to believe that strange things happen in such strange circles. This, in part, is justification for the very unlikely first murder.
This is perhaps one of the key points; this group of students who come to the fateful decision to kill a friend (sorry not sorry) are like a parody of students at a semi-elite university in a north-eastern leafy town in America. Perhaps in this way, The Secret History, published thirty years ago, has not stood the test of time because I don't think there exists such mystique surrounding the student lifestyle; the student experience no longer feels elitist but now is part of the main stream. Sally Rooney has written about students but her focus was never the day to day experience of study in the way that Tart focusses greedily on every aspect of tertiary level education. She expects us to believe that just such a group of gothic, weirdo classicists would exist without ever bothering to give them real psychologies or real dialogue. They are representative of 'students', a special category of person who we lesser mortals cannot really understand. Only now, everyone has been to university and can say, "it is not really like that". On the point of feeling outdated, another curious element of the book is that sex does not feature in any detailed sense. Most novelists today will not shy away from sex scenes; it is considered as a fundamental part of a character's life and even if only the emotional impact of intimacy is documented, the reader recognises the realism of the world the character inhabits. In The Secret History, sex is hardly alluded to and certainly not described. We know that our narrator, Richard, has sex but it is never made an event, rather we are told that he was too drunk to recall what happened. This is one further example of not fully realising her characters; it feels dated as writers accept now that realism is a 'worts and all' approach to the psychological elements of a character's life.
The Secret History is not one of the best psychological thrillers but it was a debut novel, and it is almost unfortunate for Donna Tart that it became such a cult success. She didn't write another novel for ten years. If it hadn't been such a success perhaps she would have come back with something honed and better-crafted sooner. As it is, there is some great writing in The Secret History. Tart is very good at describing PTSD, the way our world shifts after trauma but for the rest of the world, life is unchanged and maddeningly mundane to witness. She is also very good at slowing down pace at moments of action. In some ways this disconnect between unfolding drama and the slowness of our thoughts is almost comical. In one of the final scenes, Richard is shot in the abdomen and his slow acceptance of the fact of this, is detailed with almost deadpan humour which serves to pace the dramatic scene unfolding simultaneously, "I put my hand over the hole in my shirt. Bending forward slightly, I felt a sharp pain. I expected everyone to stop and look at me. No one did. I wondered if I should call it to their attention." Not only do we recognise the occasions when we assume that our pain must have communicated itself to others when in fact, the other players are oblivious but this also reaffirms Richard's position, as always, on the periphery of the friendship group, as any good narrator should be. In this way, Tart is similarly good at describing the aftermath of Bunny's murder, all the friends assuming that someone must know, someone must have smelled it on them but life continues completely unchanged, events even playing to their advantage.
These insights are where the writing showed most promise. Perhaps Tart herself would be surprised that people still read The Secret History thirty years after she wrote it. It's legend, if not its refinement, has certainly stood the test of time.
