It’s September, which means it’s time to read The Secret History. I read it every year around back-to-school time, though it’s been a decade(ish) since I’ve been back to school.The Secret History tells the story of six Classics majors in a small, elite college in Vermont. There’s a set of flirty twins, a flamboyant rich kid with a mansion in the country, a brooding genius, our unassuming Californian narrator, Richard, and Bunny, the semi-lovable idiot. There’s also their professor, Julian, who makes a special allowance for Richard when he arrives at school, seeing as how he usually limits his enrollment to five students.
The first line of the book, which I know by heart and will spout at random during any discussion of contemporary literature, in an attempt to hook people, is: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
The Secret History manages to do all things for me as a reader: challenge and titillate, captivate and horrify. It’s appropriately literary and juicily indulgent at the same time. I mean, it’s a murder mystery starring Classics majors!
It’s not just the story, either. There’s enough literary allusion to keep you Wikipediaing for days, and Tartt’s prose is wondrous: taught and expansive, somehow, always beautiful but rarely sentimental. I’ve been rereading this book once a year for a decade, and it never loses it’s power.
I’m not alone in my reverence. Tartt has a rabid, far-reaching posse of obsessees. It helps that she herself is one of the most notoriously reclusive working American writers, a persona that only makes the novel seem that much more magical. There’s an adorably maintained fan site, a reader’s guide, and no shortage of bookseller fans.
Emma Straub, bookseller at Book Court in Brooklyn, and author of the recently published Other People We Married, told Bookslut that if she had to recommend only one book for the rest of her life, it would be The Secret History.
I emailed Emma and asked her what she loves so much about the novel, as both a bookseller and a writer:
“My thoughts on the book as a bookseller are very simple: it’s a completely engrossing read. Poor Bunny! Oh, Bunny. I’ve always loved campus novels, and a sexy, murderous campus novel is the best of all. It’s often the first book I will try to sell someone. As a writer, I’m impressed by the fact that her plot is as delicious as her sentences. That’s not always easy to find.”
It’s the first book I try to sell people, too. I don’t sell books, but I sell this one. So, I guess that’s what I’m getting down to here: read this book. Read it now, in the fall, especially if you’re one of the unlucky ones who didn’t attend a private liberal arts college in New England. As for the reading itself, if you’re fortunate enough to have access to some warm cuddly perch overlooking a blustery park or college campus, I’d advise taking advantage of that. I’ll be cranking up my air conditioner and pretending it’s the first bite of an oncoming frost.
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