More on The Secret History

I wrote about the book before, the time as I was still reading it. I was drawn into the story from the fist pages. This is what Donna Tartt’s books are like. It is easy to make such a generalization as she has written only three books and I already have read two of the three. The author promises the next book in 10 years time, I am glad that I still have one more unread. The pleasure, reflections and fun of reading The Little Friend are still ahead of me. I think, I will make a break from Donna Tartt and delay the pleasure as well as balance my reading a bit. David Copperfield, Cixi and a couple of books by Adam Phillip are in reading right now and I am still choosing my number one of the current books. The one I intend to read in one go.

Back to Donna Tartt… The Secret History is another elegant book, just right for my Year of Elegance that actually has not been so elegant after all. It is a book about being cultured and this appeals to some of the readers. It is also about beauty of things, art, nature… And it says that unless beauty is wed to something more meaningful is always superficial. Hmm… something to think about. Florentine museums, churches and galleries say that adoration of God makes art meaningful. This is fine with me. But beautiful objects one just likes to look at and hold do not seem to be wed to anything meaningful except for giving pleasure to the observer. Hmm…. again.

The Secret History is a multilayer story and one of the layers is Donna’s version of Crime and Punishment. Comparing a writer to Dostoyevsky is a big if not arrogant statement, but I am not doing it lightly. I read Crime and Punishment many years ago and still remember the sticky, oppressive feeling the book left me with. The feeling is still there when I think about some of the fragments that stuck to my mind for good. The same happened to me while reading the second part of The Secret History. I did not enjoy the reading and yet I could not put the book away.  The unpleasant feeling is still with me. It may stay for a while, it seems.

One statement by Julian, the teacher, one of the characters of the book, made me ponder: “ a Hindu saint being able to slay a thousand on the battlefield and it not being a sin unless he felt remorse”. It that true in general sense? There is a lot of remorse that the characters felt and this creates a really Dostoyevsky’s atmosphere. It is so easy to kill and so difficult to live. But perhaps only if one feels remorse.

The story is also about friendship. Can it be real or is it an illusion we want to create out of desire to share some events of life with someone caring and trustworthy? As the story develops we see that most of the situations taken by the narrator as acts of friendship were really dictated by self interest of his friends. Were there really friends or was it just a projected need of Richard. The idealistic part of me cries realizing that this is often true in life. This is a dramatic statement but formulated with tongue-in-cheek and with acceptance of life realities.

The main character, Henry, fascinates and puzzles me. Liking him to Mycroft Holmes? I wish I could talk to someone about complexities of his nature and coming up with justification for his decisions and acts. Comments and discussion on the subject would be most welcome. She hopes...

P.S. Writing about the book in my first review, I felt that I did not give it justice. I felt it but could not put my finger on what actually bothers me in what I had written. I published the post anyway and got a comment from my very faithful reader and commenter saying that he will give the book a miss. This is absolutely understandable, we like different things and I was not hurt by it as I was not trying to convince anyone to read The Secret History, even if I thought that the book is definitely worth while reading. What bothered me however when I wrote about the book that it was coming across as a very trivial story. On reflection, it is a very trivial in many ways. Like one of those books to read fast to kill time. This is deceiving. One reads the book fast, of course, but this is a deep, wise book, written elegantly, with great knowledge of various aspects of art, culture and human nature. It investigates our motives actions and ways of dealing with consequences. It is a universal book about human conditions and issues. A great book for people who like philosophy and psychology.

The author is likened to Dickens and I am starting to understand why Donna Tartt’s name is often mentioned together with the great XIX century writer. The same attention to detail, wonderful narratives, written in the first person (like David Copperfield, I am just reading). There are, no doubt, more similarities but I am only half way trough my first Dickens’s book. (4/1/2016)