A NOSEDIVE INTO THE DARKEST CORNERS OF HUMANITY
When it comes to dark academia murder mysteries, The Secret History by Donna Tartt is a classic. Everyone starts from this book if they like this trope.
However, I couldn’t give it more than 3 stars, and I’ll tell you why.
The beginning is promising. A young man, called Richard, goes to Hampden University on a whim to escape his boring and awful life in a small town. Once there, he becomes obsessed with a small group of students and their enigmatic teacher Julian. In Richard’s eyes, they are like mythical creatures from another world. The group learn Greek, and as Richard has already spent 2 years studying the language, he’s desperate to join them.
Once he joins, he starts learning more and more about each of them – Francis, Henry, the twins Charlie and Camilla, and finally, Bunny. Each of them are unique individuals yet all the while you’re wondering why they end up killing one of the group.
That’s the thing – we start off learning that one of them dies, and as the story progresses we learn why that happens and what the consequences of this are.
As a murder mystery, this is solid. I was interested the whole time. I was surprised at many points, including the end, which was all amazing as a reading experience. However, my problem comes with the revelations towards the end about each of these characters. Don’t get me wrong, this book is well written, if you like philosophy, you’ll love this book. And I loved the characters themselves, but the moment we started to learn about their individual relationships with each other, along with the protagonist, I couldn’t help but feel disgusted.
That’s because I think this book wanted to delve into the worst of humanity and shine a light on it, like it’s no big deal, like all of us have these relationships in the dark. And while accurate, as a reader of romance and happily ever afters, I was startled to read all of this. Not that I don’t like to read dark books or tragedies or taboo subjects, but I think I was not expecting things to devolve so quickly toward the end. Maybe the build up was on purpose – to think so highly of these mythical creatures and then reveal how messed up they really are.
In the end, I think what startled me the most about this story was how much it hid from the reader. There were all those hidden compartments that didn’t show you what people were really like. So as a result, you’d think ‘oh this is a nice guy’ and then discover that the character in question was the worst of them all. As for the teacher, Julian, he wasn’t as prominent as I thought he would be. But at least the ending was appropriate to end this whole mess. A good, solid ending, and kind of sad.
If you like this kind of raw gradual storytelling/unveiling, then this is the perfect book for you. If you don’t like reading about toxic relationships and morally grey characters, this might really startle you. And the thing is, you know the writer knows what they’re doing when you get a visceral reaction reading their book. As a murder mystery this is great and it’s very well written, albeit it goes off too much into philosophizing and it might have used a better editor. So I give it 3 stars.
Obviously, this is just my personal taste. Be careful when you pick it up and all will be well.
Reviewed by Violeta Nedkova
