Ella is a senior student at Riccarton High School who is currently at Upper Riccarton Library doing a Student Workplace Experience. This is a nine week programme where students gain practical hands-on experience to learn and develop important skills, make new connections, and discover the many different career opportunities with the library.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt follows main character Richard Papen throughout his university experience as a Classics student in a class with five other students and an unorthodox professor. Richard unknowing follows his friends into questionable situations and it takes him a while until he discovers that he’s been incriminated.
As amazing as this book was, the one thing that I didn’t particularly like is the length. The first part of the book moves slowly and has a few more interesting spikes that involve Richard sleeping in a factory, reasons to dislike Bunny and the lessons taught by Jullian (their professor). I felt that it dragged out a bit and could have picked up a bit more quickly. But, at the same time, I understand why Donna Tartt did this.
That first part of the book is all about getting to know these characters, Richard mostly as he’s the main character, but the others too: Henry, Charles, Francis, Camilia and Bunny. Donna needed us to trust these characters, like Henry, Charles, Francis and Camilla, and dislike Bunny.
She needed the audience to be on the same page as Richard - someone who’s just met these people and they’re amazing, they’re smart, they’re kind, they include him, and he trusts them more than anyone there and Donna needs us to begin to hate Bunny. Bunny who’s mean and rude and is constantly splashing Henry’s money everywhere and doesn’t do his work. I understand why Donna did this because she needed us to know and trust these characters as much as Richard, so when they betrayed his trust, it betrayed our trust when we find out what type of people they are.
I would recommend this book to young adults (16 and up) and adults and to fans of Classical studies and fans of drama. I can’t really compare this book to another series or standalone book because I haven’t read a book quite like this before, but I’d say fans of ‘Dead Poets Society’ and 'If We Were Villains’ would enjoy this (maybe). Overall, it’s a good read with some good twists with some questionable characters and it’s poetically written.
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SPOILER SECTION
This section of Ella's review includes a discussion of symbolism which includes some important plot points.
One of my favourite things about this book is how Donna Tartt uses symbolism in the smallest of things. In the second half of the book, after they decide to kill Bunny and have met by a ravine on a mountain, one of Bunny’s daily walks, there are ferns by the ravines' edge. When Bunny finds them there, he asks them what they’re doing there and Henry calmly responds that they’re looking for ferns. Then he pushes Bunny off the edge and he falls down into the ravine. Obviously he’s died, whether it was the impact or the broken neck. A couple of months later, Richard, Henry, Charles, Camilla and Francis attend his funeral and bring ferns.
This might sound really disrespectful considering they used this to kill Bunny, but it’s quite symbolic. Ferns represent eternal youth and earlier in the book, Bunny talks about wanting to live forever. In the sense that he was twenty five years old when he died, he will be twenty five forever. He will forever be young because he was never able to grow old. So, in a way, achieving immortality which was something highly sought after by the ancient Greeks, something that Bunny wanted.
And in a way, Henry gave that to him. With having ferns both figuratively and literally around Bunny’s death (which Henry caused), he gave Bunny immortality by taking away the ability to grow old. Henry, who’s a bit unhinged, smart and probably a little psychotic might have realised this and that’s why things were done this way. Later, Henry calls his murder of Bunny, a ‘redistribution of matters’, showing the audience he feels no guilt for killing Bunny. And that’s why, because he doesn’t feel any guilt at all, because in his own unhinged mind, he gave Bunny that immortality. He didn’t kill Bunny, he gave him the gift of eternal life.
But the further we get through the book, the less justified Bunny’s murder becomes to us, the audience, because no, he wasn’t a saint, but they weren’t either and we were led to believe they were.
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