From the back cover: "The Secret History tells the story of a gorup of classics students at an elite American college, who are cerebral, obsessive and finally murderous...it is a haunting, compelling and brilliant piece of fiction." I couldn't agree more with this assessment of The Secret History--it is a simply amazing book. That's why I have held on to it this long, but recently I remembered how I got it in the first place--another American student gave it to me while I was in Austria. So this book is already well-traveled, and should probably keep moving. I hope the next reader enjoys it as much as I did.

This is on its way to mfa--shipped yesterday by surface mail. Hope it doesn't take too long!

it reached me today - it didn't take long at all! i'll let you know when i finish it. thank you very much!

"the secret history" promised much... but it didn't deliver.
the plot is too long and nothing seems to ever happen that hasn't been told beforehand. it could be an interesting narrative technique, i agree - but meaningless in this case, i'm afraid.
if there's a delay or a building up to the foreclosure of an event, that event needs to be explained and analised afterwards, not just stated. there are a lot of details that fall into this trap in this book, especially as far as relationships are concerned.
characterisation is also a flop,except perhaps for richard and henry. everything and everybody surrounding bunny is a stereotype, and so much is left unexplained regarding the twins, for instance, that their presence in the story works almost as a bad teaser.
however, the reason why i felt so let down has to do with the approach to the classics, which remains embarrassingly superficial. there was/is so much more to greek culture than vanity, arrogance and refined blood thirst. once again, if a so called bachannal is given so much importance, it has to be described through more than vague memories - especially if supernatural effects are being brought into play in an otherwise realistic novel.
finally one last note - i could never place the story in a real time. i'm not sure if this is derrogatory, or a compliment instead though...

i'm glad i read it nevertheless. thanks for sharing and please forgive me for the long time it took me to read it.
it has been promised to a bookcrosser long ago; and if she's not interested anymore i'll go through the wishlists' database to find someone who wants to have it as a rabck....
the journey is not over yet :)

sent to samuli in germany yesterday.

I got this book as a RABCK from mfa, because it was on my wishlist. (I knew this wishlist would be good for something one day!)
It will take me a while to get to it, though, because of the bookrings that regularly turn up at my house, but I will read it as soon as possible and see that its journey continues afterwards.
Thanks, mfa!

Well, I am certainly glad to have had the chance to read this book, if only to know what all the fuss was about. Much ado about nothing, I'm sorry to say.
Well, not exactly nothing, but it certainly didn't live up to the hype. When I read the blurb I though, Oh no, that's just another story about rich, spoiled college brats that kill somebody just for the hell of it and get away with it.
In a way that really was the gist of the story (sorry to spoil it for anyone!). On the other hand, of course, it wasn't. I agree with most of what mfa said about the sloppy characterization and the strange narrative technique. I mean, telling us within the first 5 pages, that they are gonna kill Bunny is really taking the suspense away. And the book does drag on interminally. It could have been shortened by about a third or so without losing any of the relevant elements. There are way too many secondary characters introduced that end up having no effect on the story whatsoever. And the main characters do stay a little too sketchy for my taste. Richard we get to know best, because he is the narrator; Henry, because he is the main focus of the group; but everyone else seems a bit one-dimensional.
I had a bit of trouble finding out when exactly this story was meant to be set. There is never really any timeframe mentioned explicitly, as far as I noticed. But since the hippies in this book are all quite old already, and she mentions old "Quincy" re-runs, I'd say it's supposed to be the late 80s or early 90s. Could that be about right? Because if it is, I am wondering very much, why nobody in this story had a mobile phone. I mean, apparently they are all wealthy kids (or at least that's the impression), but they always have to run around looking for payphones and such. It just got a bit on my nerves, because it seemed like half the book was concerned with somebody or other trying to get hold of somebody on the phone. It was getting quite tedious to read that again and again.
The references to greek history were way too longwinded and fantastically boring to me. I'm sorry, I just don't give a hoot about all this stuff and I don't think it did anything to make the characters any clearer to me or bring the story forward in any way. And this bacchanal thing seemed just totally ridiculous to me from the onset.Either she should have explained its significance a lot better, or thought of something else entirely to set them off. But this just didn't seem to me a valid excuse for everything that followed. I felt really sorry for that poor farmer guy (on the other hand, what was he doing out there in the middle of the night anyway?).
That said, it was not all bad. (Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered to read all 660 pages of it.) I liked the way the book showed how a group of people can be driven by circumstances to believe that murder is the only way out. And it was interesting to watch what it did to all of them, how they all fell apart afterwards. Insofar they didn't really get away with it.
I was just a bit disappointed by the character of Bunny. I mean, shouldn't she have made us, the readers, sorry for him? At least a bit? They way he was written, I could understand only too well why they killed him. The guy was a total nuisance. The thing I found hard to understand was why they bothered to hang around with him in the first place. Killing this guy doesn't seem like a thing to lose any sleep over, especially after the way he behaved in the end. Obnoxious doesn't even begin to cover it. Sloppy characterization again.

I am not gonna keep this book, because I won't read it again. I'll try to start a bookray with it or give it away as a RABCK.

Received today - Thank you so much.

I didn't think this book was too bad though it was a little long for my liking. It glossed over some key areas and laboured over less important points. I've been curious about Donna Tartt so I'm glad I read it and it wouldn't stop me from reading more of her work.

Having checked with samulli this book is now available as a RABCK.

Posting as a RABCK to Wibba tomorrow :)

Received today

Received yesterday as a trade.

Thanks Wibba :-)

I loved this and found it to be quite compulsive reading. I thought it was quite clever how the actual deed was glossed over but then referred back to a couple of times in more detail. I enjoyed the build up to the event and then watching how it affected everyone afterwards. Excellent book.

Arrived today, thanks so much Carole. I'll get to it as soon as I can xx