The Secret History by Donna Tartt

In a famously recorded interview released in the early 1990s, Donna Tartt remarkably acclaimed that her first step in writing her celebrated murder mystery novel, the Secret History, was to reveal the murderer on the very first page.

''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.''

There, a dilemma began: how do you create suspense knowing what you already know?

The Secret History initially descends into the unreliable narration of Richard Papen. Bored of his mundane, abusive life back in Plano, California, he ditches his prior career path to enrol in a prestigious ancient Greek class instructed by the eccentric Professor Julian Morrow in Hampden College, Vermont.

There, young, impressionable, and naive, Richard rapidly becomes bewitched by a group of clever, elitist misfits in his Greek class. Due to his blind romanticization of the group, his once steady morals dissolve into something less apparent. With his newfound sense of superiority, he, with the rest of the clique, have their lives altered permanently by the experience of how freeing it is to ‘truly live without ethics’ and how easy it is to kill.

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’'

Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”

The novel gauges deeply into the human psyche and unravels one of the most primal natures of mankind – how easy it is to be influenced. The group almost consistently finds themselves taking ancient concepts from the Greek classics and applying them to their own modern lives. The Greeks used to live without basic morality, so why must they?

The Greeks didn’t have much remorse for the dead, so why should they?

The characters of the story are neither likeable nor unlikeable, rather, they lie in the gray-in-between. You find yourself justifying their actions, yet at times, you feel revolted to the core by their words. Like a scale, your emotions while reading are a constant imbalance, weighing from feeling remorse to absolute disgust. It's one of the best roller-coaster experiences you’ll ever feel.

Tartt has the astonishing ability to manipulate – the same way Richard is manipulated throughout the novel. You find yourself romanticizing certain people all while cringing at others – just like Richard does. Other times, you find yourself feeling the utter shock of betrayal, heartbroken to the core, just like Richard feels countless times. In some ways, you are the protagonist. To be so involved with a book, where your thoughts intertwine perfectly with the protagonists, is a rare find and so, so valuable.

Not only does Donna Tartt create suspense so overwhelming it makes your skin crawl, but she also does it while delivering the most delightful aesthetics throughout the novel. Her prose is powerful enough to carve a hole straight into the core of your heart, yet is strangely comforting at times. Whoever said a murder mystery cannot be beautiful? It’s tantalizing to express how mesmerizing her writing is because she stole all the good words.

I feel as if the famously known quote ‘’beauty is terror,’’ fits so perfectly within the lines of the book because as terrifying as the book is, it is one of the most beautiful novels I have ever read.