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    The Secret History
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    The Secret History
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    The Secret History
    Audiobook22 hours

    The Secret History

    Written by Donna Tartt

    Narrated by Donna Tartt

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A Read With Jenna Book Club Pick • International Bestseller

    “Enthralling. . . . A remarkably powerful novel.” —The New York Times

    In this brilliant novel from Donna Tartt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch, comes a richly textured and hypnotic story of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance.

    Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampeden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life—in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

    Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another. . . a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life. . . and lead to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning...

    Editor's Note

    Incredible début...

    Tartt's incredible début is many things: a tragedy starring a close-knit group of classics students, a murder mystery in reverse, a dark meditation on aesthetic perfection & ugly reality.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateSep 1, 2004
    ISBN9780060786472
    Unavailable
    The Secret History
    Author

    Donna Tartt

    Donna Tartt is a novelist, essayist and critic. Her first novel, The Secret History, has been published in twenty-three countries.

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    Reviews for The Secret History

    4/5

    6,076 ratings288 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 1/5
      Oh my goodness this book went on forever! Also the author’s voice is so hard to listen to! I really wish it had been read by someone else because it would’ve been a lot more engaging. Such a shame! I loved The Goldfinch and heard nothing but good things about this story. But the characters are obnoxious, privileged, and unlikeable.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Very interesting and well written. A rather unique book, where although not particularly exciting in the normal sort of way, always provided a subtle sense of fascination.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I am taken aback.
      It was horrifying, but compelling. Hypnotic in fact. Terror, of the religious kind… identification, beauty. And such sadness.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      The writing was pretty good, but the narrator was aggravating.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I've been meaning to read this for a long time, and especially so after loving The Goldfinch a couple of years ago (although I didn't get on with The Little Friend). The Secret History did not disappoint at all - Donna Tartt's considerable writing talents are showcased to their fullest here, and they seem all the more incredible considering this was her debut!I love her descriptions of people, places and things that can be particularly difficult to describe, like the quality of light at a particular time of day or year. And I particularly admire her knack for making big characters (Bunny in particular) leap off the page through the lens of a not so memorable protagonist.I'm looking forward to seeing what Tartt does next!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I don't get the hype around this book. The pacing can be nightmarish at times, yet, I never got to love the characters nor forgive their crime. I think it's because *Spoilers ahead* Bunny gets killed for almost snitching on them for a crime they did commit. And I could forgive that if they weren't so dismissive about it; they act like the poor man they slaughtered was irrelevant. They are so pretentious, one of them even said at some point that "he was no Voltaire, but he felt bad about him". Now, i don't like Bunny because I don't like sexist homophobes, but he didn't die for being a bad person. He died for blackmailing rich snobs whom got wasted and carelessly killed a guy and I'm meant to be like "Oh nooo, not the trust fund babies, they are too dark academia to go to jail :(". And then, I have to deal with the only female lead being a mere object of affection and part of twincest? No thanks.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Great beginning but then such a ponderous meandering letdown. The mystery does not pay off, the characters do effectively nothing for hours, I can't say more without getting into spoilers

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      "Huh?" This book is tedious. There are memorable characters in an interesting situation but Tartt's delivery is long-winded and wound up in too many Classical allusions for this to be enjoyable.

      Greek tragedy in guise of murder mystery. Unlikable characters, strange situations, not very enjoyable. Perhaps for the classical scholars?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's very atmospheric and can be very suspenseful at times. On the other hand, it's elevated language sometimes seems out of place, and it can drag during the calmer sections. The first and third sections are quite good while the second was dull and hard to get through. I swear that the characters spend half of their time asking where each other are located (if I had to read "Where's Camilla?" one more time, I was going to abandon the book), and the sentence "[He/She/I] awoke with a start," was used so many times that I would audibly groan every time I heard it.

      The story is good, but this book really could have used a good edit for length. I'm all for long books when there's a lot to say, but so much of the detail was simply unnecessary.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I felt the story and pace were boring initially, and I had difficulties caring about the characters. As far as the audiobook, I would just read the book. Listening, I can see why voice acting is underrated. I hope in future books she uses a professional voice actor because, for me, the character's voices weren’t distinguishing enough, especially since most of the characters are male. Her voice made it challenging to know who was talking.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Extraordinary first novel from a young writer. Exceptional in observational detail, background knowledge, pace, dialogue, mood, and yet full of flaws, too. Biggest criticisms: There is little depth to these characters (understandable for college students maybe, but the adults are constructed this way, too) and some situations, conceits are just too overwhelming to accept. While not a classic, I had no trouble seeing why this novel arrived with fanfare and made Tartt a literary darling.
    • 3/5
      Author narrated this audiobook and the performance is so bland!
    • 3/5
      At its best, The Secret History is written in a fluid and eloquent style, with descriptions of New England and private liberal arts college life that are breathtaking in their depth. Tartt's considerable gift for capturing the mentality of a character or community really shines through in places - her careful texturing of arrogant, morally-skewed young classicists is so dead-on that, at one point, I had to check the copyright date to make sure the story wasn't in some way about me. (It's not, by the way.) Tartt also captures the "fugitive" mindset, accurately portraying the thoughts and behaviors of people under scrutiny, as well as the way law enforcement tends to scrutinize. There are passages in the novel that so precisely and cleverly encapsulate the small liberal arts college experience that they make alumni of such colleges (Sarah Lawrence, for example) laugh out loud.

      Still, the flaws of The Secret History are difficult (for me) to overlook. This is nit-picking, to be sure, but as someone with a classical background, I found the classics to largely be a poorly-developed vehicle for the actions of the novel's characters. It's easy to place the mentality of these characters in a specific time period - they are Modernists, drenched in Greek, Latin and French, anti-religious yet fascinated with the mystical. They are Pound and Eliot fragmented into multiple characters; sadly, each of these characters feel like caricatures of Modernists. With the exception of a few (contrived) instances of grammatical needling, no character in the novel displays significant knowledge of Latin or Greek. Everything quoted is obvious, from Ecclesiastes (nihil sub sole novum) to a passage from "The Wasteland." Our characters are so brilliant that they manage to reconstruct the Dionysian mysteries, but never once quote Parmenides, or Heraclitus, or Catullus? Henry researches plants and poisons from the classical Arabic perspective, but never once mentions Avicenna? That seems highly uncharacteristic for such a methodical and academic character. Add to this Tartt's constant confusion of the subjunctive mood in English (even after specifically mentioning irregular subjunctives in French), and an important dimension of the novel becomes suspect.

      The greatest disappointment of The Secret History is the last quarter of the novel. It feels hasty, with characters and scenes merely sketched out or glossed over. The ending is predictable and unsatisfying. The final fate of the characters is passable, I suppose, but it feels wanting. Overall, I treasure The Secret History for its illustration of various walks of life with which I'm familiar, but feel it needs significant revision and development to become the great story it aspires to be.
    • 3/5
      The fact that Donna Tartt is the narrator is incredible!!!
    • 5/5
      Wonderful read. Oddly engaging and thrilling, it totally hooked me in and I couldn't stop listening.
    • 1/5
      12 hours of to much unnecessary garbage. Way to long.
    • 5/5
      Honestly read this because I heard it was the Bible on dark academia fashion and I was trying to understand what was all the fuss. With that in mind, I really didn’t expect it to be this incredible. Donna Tartt, both in her prose and in the way she reads the book, made for such a tour de force. I couldn’t stop listening. The pacing is perfect, the personalities of each character, the mystery and the drama.. it had me hooked. I recognized simultaneously that it was a slow burn, taking its time with the story, but it was so captivating I didn’t want it to end. Didn’t learn until later that Donna Tartt was the mastermind behind The Goldfinch. Absolutely superb.
    • 4/5
      Boy is this thing long. I almost quit a few times as the long winded description and slow pacing can become maddening at points. But, I did not bail, and I’m glad I stuck with it. The “twist” at the end is not as shocking as some would have you believe, but overall a good novel that does a great job with tone and effectively pulling you into its world.
    • 5/5
      A masterpiece! Easily one of the best books I’ve ever listened to.
    • 5/5
      Just stunning. Couldn't stop, had to read it all in one sitting, absolutely drunk, delirious, insane. Hate reading books this good.
    • 2/5
      The extraordinarily bad French pronunciation was unbearable. I’m begging the reader no more books with French words please or else take a phonetics class.
    • 5/5
      I loved the character development in this book. The author/reader really brought them to life.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful storytelling!! Had me on the edge of my seat the entire book.
    • 1/5
      I could not stand the voice of the narrator; just awful! It prevented me from listening to the book. I am used to audiobooks but I rarely stop listening because of the narrator.
    • 1/5
      Unbearable. This could have been summed up in a 12-page short story. Pretentious and unclever.
    • 3/5
      A dark academia classic with nice and detailed descriptions... but I honestly likes If we were Villains more?
    • 1/5
      Does the author, also the narrator, not happy with her book as well that she narrates her own book the way she did? ?
    • 3/5
      I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it's very atmospheric and can be very suspenseful at times. On the other hand, it's elevated language sometimes seems out of place, and it can drag during the calmer sections. The first and third sections are quite good while the second was dull and hard to get through. I swear that the characters spend half of their time asking where each other are located (if I had to read "Where's Camilla?" one more time, I was going to abandon the book), and the sentence "[He/She/I] awoke with a start," was used so many times that I would audibly groan every time I heard it.

      The story is good, but this book really could have used a good edit for length. I'm all for long books when there's a lot to say, but so much of the detail was simply unnecessary.
    • 2/5
      The book is interesting enough and very literary but the reading by the author is so horrible it ruins everything. You can hear her snorty breathing and swallowing so much that it's intrusive. Her voice is downright annoying. She almost stumbles over words and has awkward pauses. It was unfortunate of the author to think her reading talent comes any where near to her writing skill.
    • 2/5
      The Secret History by Donna Tartt has been on my radar for years so I was happy to find out for myself why it's on so many Top 100 lists. Published in the 1990s and set in Hampden College in Vermont, the story is narrated by college student Richard Papen and is essentially the story of what happens to him and his five fellow classics students. On the first page of the Prologue we learn one of them has been murdered.Richard is on a scholarship but his fellow students have wealthy backgrounds and they're all studying Ancient Greek under the exclusive tutelage of a Professor who will only take a limited number of students on at any one time. The novel is peppered with quotes in Greek, and the students are intelligent, rich and somewhat entitled which gives the book an altogether snobbish undertone.The narrator was irritatingly elusive and I wasn't quite sure if this was the point. The novel provided a penetrating character analysis of the friends without ever giving us a clear picture of the narrator and I'm still not sure why. Each of the characters was flawed and unlikeable in their own way and their behaviour was sometimes detestable. I'm just talking about their everyday behaviour here, not the fact that they murdered one of their friends.Given I had little to zero understanding of the classics references contained within the book, I was relieved to discover I could easily follow the mystery through to a satisfactory ending. Although I was left wanting to know more about Henry's past and what happened in the woods. Ultimately, this was a grudging read and a slow-burn. There's much to admire in the writing and the research is impressive, but it just didn't ring my bell. If I wanted a college setting with inspiring references to classic literature and a tragic death I'd turn to Dead Poets Society.