Let me start by saying - if dark academia is not your thing, just don't read this book.
To be honest, the book has a lot less to do with dark academia then is implied on social media - but if you can't stomach dark academia, you can't stomach this book because even to me, the novel is highly disturbing, and I wonder at how Donna Tartt was even able to imagine this. Which led to me to search up Donna Tartt-
And well, she looks just like the kind of evil genius who could write something like this. So, without futher ado, let me tell you all about it.
The first part of the book is a prologue with this starting sentence -
"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."
Which, if you're like me, you've definitely seen on BookTok. Now, I'm not going to lie, when I read this I thought it was some kind of oh-no-we're-stranded-on-a-snowy-island-or-whatever-and-we're-all-going-to-slowly-die survivalist drama book, which made me not want to read it. Ironic. But in fact, it has nothing to do with that, and once you read further on, you realize that it actually has to do a group of friends deciding to murder their friend, Bunny. And that leads you to wonder - why? Which I must relate to an interview I saw of Donna Tartt where she quoted someone else saying something alone the lines of the fact that suspense is a bomb ticking under the table and only the audience knows.
Well, then, the book starts off slightly abstract - our favorite unreliable narrator is Richard Papen, who longs to escape his absolutely colorless and poor life in California with two parents who don't seem to love him. So, he gets financial aid and into a liberal arts college called Hampden or something. He's finally starting to have a normal life, make friends, do drugs, all the sorts of things that liberal art majors do, when he sets his sights on to getting into this elitist Ancient Greek class headed by an eccentric professor named Julian and occupied by only five students - Bunny, Henry, Francis, and the twins, Charles and Camilla (I can't stop thinking Harry and Charlie).
Now, I know all of these characters are supposed to seem different from the university, but it's hilarious to imagine them walking around in their weird clothes and manners while everyone else is dressed in the 80's style and lingo. So, upon a few encounters with these mysterious Greek students, Richard finally convinces Julian to let him into the class and change the plan of the original five students.
Now, to learn the story, I personally think Richard is the perfect narrator because he presents such a clueless character that portrays the moral of the story really well. Richard is basically just like any other outsider watching the five students, except that he is also many of the character's confidante. So he just watches it all unfold and follows the lead of the other characters, narrating the story like it's been told to him. One of my favorite The Secret History theories is the fact that Richard knows more than he's letting on, or at least thinks that he's telling the full story (my FAVORITEEE) - that the story he told us is influenced or incomplete. But I guess we'll never know for sure.
So the parts leading to Bunny's murder is the essentially first half of the book as the book is split in to two books with very long chapters. The second part is the aftermath. In the first half, all of the characters except Bunny and Henry seem fairly normal. Henry seems to clearly have some psychopathic issues going on the entire book, which is corroborated by the fact that he kills not just Bunny, but also several other beings. And Bunny, who seems normal, even if he has a spending problem, turns out to be a wholly irritating character that pretty much torments all the other characters, but ends up predicting their future.
Personally, I think it's after his death where things start to get more disturbing - and dare I say, more interesting? Now, I must say, all of these characters are deplorable - there's no denying that. I mean, they were all clearly bordering on sociopathic behaviour or were at least being blindly manipulated by a pyschopath (I doubt they were supposed to be likeable, but that made them all the more, I don't know, likeable to me. Only for two of the characters, though - Richard and Francis, who were, while not innocent at all, relatively innocent). However - I thought that this book was going to be more about the relationship between Julian and his students. Julian pretty much took a backseat the entire book and turned out to be a "coward".
Okay - so maybe what makes this a weird read for me is all of the topics mentioned that don't seem to fit into the theme of what the book is about (or what I percieved). The three characters (mostly the twins) lack any significance or character in the first half of the book, then in the second half, they get an incestuous and abusive storyline which I don't see how it makes sense in the context of the book at all. Unfortunately - this also happens to be the tail-end of the only really exciting parts of the books, in my opinion, which is about 200 out of 500 pages. Not to mention, the book has pretty graphic descriptions of suicide, etc. and while Donna Tartt has continuously proved that the philosophy of the book is really interesting and the prose is enchanting, there had to be better ways to bring it to light.
One more theory I adore - Bunny was saying some pretty horrible things to them all before they decided to murder him. But what I love, and I don't know if this was intentional or not, but some of the things that Bunny uses to torment them end up being true/their actual fate. I don't want to spoil it, but all the jabs he made at them ended up defining their future (or lack thereof). Maybe Bunny was the sane one after all (he definitely was, even though he was a jerk).
Ok, you say, so then what's the moral of the story? Honestly, this book left me in such a slump that I wasn't even able to think any cohesive thoughts about it for a while. But I think the general consensus is that the novel narrates the dangers of becoming isolated and obsessed with an "aesthetic" similar to that of the Ancient Greeks so long ago - being obsessed with the idea of beauty and philosophy so much that you think it outweighs real and rational life. But, if you read this book and it leaves a gaping hole in you, here's what I recommend:
Sob about it and then get over it.
Because if I think about it too much, I might as well go crazy myself, right?
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
By the way, if you check my blog post on The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake, you'll see a link to my YouTube channel. I real this book for a YouTube video, which will be uploaded soon. Let me know if you have any thoughts and/or recommendations!
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