Much of their glamour comes from the idyll of weekends at Francis’s country house, with its “dizzy little turret rooms, the high-beamed attic, an old sleigh in the cellar,” and the classics kids quoting The Waste-Land to each other as they row around a birch-lined lake before lunching on ham sandwiches and champagne they’ve smuggled past the groundskeeper in a teapot. But also I would enjoy living their lives, or parts of them, at least for just a little bit. Richard appears genuinely impressed by all of the above. I know: These kids wander around in suits and ties to attend their college classes in the late ’80s/early ’90s! Henry refused to take the SATs because he objects to the aesthetics of them and he’s also translating Paradise Lost into Latin for fun. And as ridiculous and pretentious a crew as they are, I absolutely do, every time. These kids are pretentious as hell, but also I would really enjoy their lifestyleįor The Secret History to work, you have to buy into the glamour of the classics majors, at least a little bit. Let’s talk about what leads up to the moment when Bunny’s best friends push him over a cliff. His sin is less moral than it is aesthetic.īut I’m getting ahead of myself. In the end, it seems as though Bunny dies not because it’s the only way everyone can avoid life in prison, but because Bunny’s reaction to the first murder (only a farmer! who cares!) is really a little bit gauche. He’s thinking about how much Bunny annoys him. Richard takes pains to assure us that when he finally participates in the murder, he is not thinking about how Bunny’s death will save his friends. jump to killing him as the only solution awfully quickly. Sure, Bunny knows too much and he’s an unstable liability, but Richard and Co. We spend the next 250-ish pages trying to work out the why.Īnd yet when we finally come to Bunny’s murder, it’s still not entirely clear why he has to die. The prologue immediately reveals who will die (Bunny), who will kill him (all of his best friends, including the narrator, Richard), and where it will happen (a ravine in the woods near campus). The first half of The Secret History stands nearly on its own as a neat and gripping horror story, a kind of inverted murder mystery. (If you would like to discuss spoilers in the comments, please make sure to label them clearly.) I’ve read up through the end of the book, but there won’t be any spoilers in the main post. In this first conversation, we’re covering everything from the prologue up to the end of Book I. Welcome to the first Vox Book Club discussion for May! This month, we’re reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, a tale of deeply pretentious yet lovable college students, murder, and the mysteries of Bacchus.
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