Chamblee54

PG just finished page 559 of “The Secret History”. Usually there is a 400 page limit, but this book has a reputation.
It is the first novel by Donna Tartt, born December 23, 1963 in Mississippi. She was educated at Bennington College in Vermont, where she met Bret Easton Ellis. Miss Tartt got connected with the right agents at the right time, and got an advance of an estimated $400,000 for her first novel.
PG remembers the buzz when it was published in 1992. Several novels by Jay McInerny and Bret Ellis had already passed before his eyes, and the concept of an unknown author getting a six figure advance got PG’s attention. The novelty wore off, and had been forgotten until an afternoon recently at the Chamblee library. “The Secret History” was waiting on the shelf, and PG decided it was time.
TSH is the story of six Greek scholars, their esoteric professor, and the redistribution of matter. The setting is a small liberal arts college in upstate Vermont, assumed to be modeled on Bennington. The well financed students do not behave. This is taken to extremes in the first scene of the story, when one of the Greek scholars is pushed off a cliff to his death.
The narrator is a California transplant named Richard Papen. He is stumbling through life, and winds up in a cult of Greek scholarship. The other five students take him into their clique, though not without a few secrets. Good times are had the first semester, until a long winter break. When the clique is reunited in spring, things are different.
PG is not an critic or a scholar. A college library can show you essays about the themes in this story, and they would bore PG. TSH is a story, with characters, plot, sex, drugs, and murder. For once the blurbs are accurate, the pages keep turning on autopilot. The amorality on display is as chilling as a Vermont winter ( bear in mind, PG has never been north of Westchester County NY, in the summer. Living in Atlanta is not complete without Yankees talking about how cold it is in the winter).