Boekverslag : Donna Tartt - The Secret History
De taal ervan is Nederlands en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1592 woorden.
De taal ervan is Nederlands en het aantal woorden bedraagt 1592 woorden.
Primaire gegevens van het gelezen werk:
Auteur: Donna Tartt
Titel: The Secret History
Ondertitel:
Opdracht:
Motto:
Verschenen in: 1992
Uitgever:
Verwachtingen vooraf: I think it should be a very compelling story since I am fond of thrillers, Newsweek wrote (on the back cover of the book) “A thinking person’s thriller”. These are exactly the thrillers I prefer to read. The book tells the story of a group classic student at an elite American college. This is rather appealing to me because I think that I will be able to identify myself with these students (I was a fulltime student myself not too long ago, living far from home).
Verantwoording keuze:
I wanted to read this book for quite some time now. I heard about, read about it, and friends of mine told me about it. Donna Tartt wrote another novel some years after this one, I have this at home but I didn’t want to read it yet because I wanted to read The secret history first. A lot of people have the opinion that her second novel is a disappointment after reading her first. I would like to find out for myself.
Eerste reactie:
My expectations were pretty accurate, it really was “a thinking person’s thriller”. The story was about six students, and I could identify with them as I expected and hoped. I liked the way the reader slowly got to know the characters, the descriptions were very vivid.
Taalgebruik:
The language wasn’t really difficult, although there were some words in it that I didn’t know. The context made clear what those words meant. There was also some Greek in it, or Greek translations, they were difficult to understand.
Tijd:
It is not very clear when the story took place, but my guess is in the early eighties. Julian Morrow is the reason why I think this: “though his face has certain features which suggest youth he has by no means a young face and his hair was snow white”. He has to be around sixty when the story took place. Nearly everyone on Campus knew Julian, and they all had fascinating information: he had been a great intellectual in the forties, and a friend to Ezra Pound and T.S Elliot. This suggests that during the forties he had to be in his twenties.
Vertelperspectief:
The story is told from Richard’s perspective, it is told from a first-person perspective.
Personages:
Richard Papen is the main character. He is twenty-eight years old (at the time that he tells the story. He is twenty at the time that the story took place) and grew up in the small village Plano in California. His family is not wealthy and actually they embarrass him a bit. His father doesn’t want to pay for his studies, he actually wants Richard to follow into his footsteps and take over the gas station in the future.
Richard moves to Hamden College, New England anyway when he is nineteen. He wants to major in English literature, but he also wants to sign up for Greek because this is the only language in which he was proficient. It is very hard to get accepted for this class, the teacher (Julian Morrow) accepts only a very limited number of students, but finally he does get accepted.
There are five other students in this Greek class, and they all seem very different (everyone on Campus thinks that they are a strange clique). Henry Winter, Bunny Corcoran, Francis Abernathy, and the twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay. Besides co-students they also appear to be close friends who spend a lot of time together. Francis has an aunt who has a house in the countryside and they go there for weekends.
As the story continues you get to know the characters, they all like to drink a lot and they take drugs occasionally. One disastrous night Henry, Francis and the twins try to act out an old Greek ritual, but in this process they kill an innocent farmer who happened to be there.
They try to cover it up and it works, the police have no clue. Bunny however finds out after a while and has great difficulty in coping with this knowledge. His behaviour becomes more and more erratic and strange, he starts blackmailing the four and threatens to go to the police.
Henry, who seems to see himself as the problem solver tries to calm Bunny down in different ways (especially by giving him money and buying him anything he wants). Richard also finds out but he understands that it was an accident and tries to help his friends, he is loyal at all costs. Gradually Bunny’s behaviour becomes so annoying that something has to be done about it, this results into another murder. These events change the life of Richard, but not in the way you would expect because he’s not really remorseful. It bonds the group, but in the end it is the cause of them falling apart. All of them react in a different way because of this murder, Richard has trouble sleeping, and Charles starts to drink heavily which results in him beating up Camilla. Henry, who always was in love with Camilla, starts to take care of her and they start a romance. Charles is very jealous (he used to sleep with his sister) and gets into terrible fights with Henry. Richard and Francis try to patch things up between all of them but it doesn’t work. Eventually they all end up in a motel room where Charles pulls a gun on Henry. Henry manages to take the gun and shoots himself.
After this they’ll go their separate ways, and in the end Richard is the only one who graduates.
Thema en motieven:
I think the subject is friendship and loyalty, wanting to belong. I can relate to this subject. I especially understand how important it is to find new friends when you are far from home. During this age it is important to belong to a group, to have people around you that you can trust. It is important to help your friends, and be loyal because it works two ways. If they can depend on you, you can also depend on them. But there have to be boundaries, and in my opinion murder is one of them. It is very good to be loyal, but is your being loyal really helping your friends eventually? In this story it is not.
My views on this haven’t changed, but I think it is wonderfully written. The way the writer tells the story, the reader gets carried away far enough to be able to justify murder. And still even though my view stayed the same, I had a lot of sympathy with the characters. I wanted them to get away with murder!
The main character is not a hero. There weren’t any heroic acts in this book from anyone. Only Henry wanted to be a hero (by being the problem solver, the person who you could depend on) but he failed miserably. Richard is just a normal boy who wanted to belong and who was loyal to his friends.
I really did sympathise with Richard, but on the other hand I don’t because he kept his mouth shut about one murder and had a part in the murder of one of his friends. He went too far.
The story matched the characters (Greek students) and the subject. The Greek translation and words were important in the context of the story. There was also “student lingo” which is relevant to be able to describe the life on Campus. There was lots of talk about drinking, drugs and which ones to use to be able to kill a person, this was also relevant.
Eigen mening:
I like the part where Richard finds out that his friends killed the farmer by accident. Henry tells him the whole story (because Richard was suspicious) about the ritual, the accident and Bunny finding out about it. I think that this is an important part in the book because after this Richard becomes completely involved in the group. From this moment on his life will change. He chose to be loyal to his friends and to help them with anything. He also could have chosen to do something else, like going to the police, but he didn’t.
C Spellbinding, it held my attention completely. On occasion I couldn’t put the book down (sometimes that was in the middle of the night) because I simply had to know where that certain plotline would go.
If I could talk to Richard I would advise him to be more open towards his friends. He wanted to belong so badly that he kept certain information to himself. He was embarrassed about his family, and about the fact that they where not wealthy. Because of this he had to spend a few weeks in a draughty, cold dump when Campus closed during the winter. He didn’t want to go to see his parents in California, but he also didn’t want to ask his friends for help. I would like to tell him that a real friendship goes both ways, the friendship he had with the other characters was a bit too one sided in my opinion. Richard was always there for them, but he forgot about himself in the process.
I would recommend this book to people who enjoy a gripping thriller. But I think you already have to be “a reader”, it isn’t a book for “starters” because sometimes the conversations can be difficult (the Greek classes), and besides this the book has 660 pages. I can imagine that this book is popular among students or people who were in college.
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