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| Image courtesy of goodreads.com |
‘Beauty is terror.’
The Secret History is a book that spent a year in my bookshelf, unread,
waiting for the moment I went five days without someone recommending it to me.
Those were wasted months; this is incredible writing.
Richard’s humble beginnings instil in him a self-conscious,
self-destructive obsession with beauty. He is a blank slate. His character is
passive, seeking to reflect rather than impose. The reader is able to slot
themselves in very easily, and so we feel keenly his sense of isolation and worshipful
reactions to new classmates. Ultimately, we also share his disillusionment as
their carefully rehearsed lines and affectations start to ring false. Those
around Richard are defined by the clothes they wear and the literature they quote
in lieu of experience, but as illusions fade Richard finds himself alone, marooned
on his island of classics and unable to cut through the isolation.
A Bacchian rite is unlikely to hold much interest without a background
of restraint and repression to make fertile the imagination. Richard’s classics
group is stuck in a suspended animation; at each point there is a dead writer’s
thought ready to explain and categorise before they have to grapple with
anything real. They look down on the ‘hoi polloi’ around them for wasting their
time on trivialities, but the reader is left questioning which path is the more
fulfilling.
In a powerful final scene, Richard finds himself within a dream
echoing a scholarly life of study and contemplation. Standing with Henry,
surrounded by other silent, unsmiling men, he watches the flickering works of
dead cultures.
But only from the other side of the glass.
Donna Tartt's latest book, The Goldfinch, got mixed reviews. I can’t help
wondering if it might have received a warmer reception if it wasn't forced to
be published into its older brother's shadow.
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