Customer Reviews

Donna Tartt's The Secret History: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)

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This is an extremely slight little handbook--too limited to be of much use to the experienced reader, yet too expensive to justify its inclusion as a complement to Tartt's modern cult classic. Students who are at all motivated can easily get as much information through a few quick internet searches. I'm giving my copy to a student TA as a handy accessory for help in grading papers.

Strangely enough I didn't like the Secret History when it was first released, and I only picked up this book because of all the advance press surrounding Ms Tartt's new novel. And now I'm a fan. Which is not, as far as I know, the job of literary criticism - but then this book is not quite lit crit, it's an odd combination of scholarship and enthusiasm that works surprisingly well. It's persuaded me that the Secret History is a much cleverer book than I gave it credit for, and it's made me marvel at Ms Tartt's erudition.

(On the strength of this volume, I picked up the same publisher's guide to American Psycho, and that one is even better.)

Right, I'm off to read the Little Friend.

Wasn't sure what to expect from this - a reader's guide makes it sound like it could be some patronising crap. But it's actually very smart, and even though I thought I knew it all about TSH, it turns out I didn't. Having said that, the author, Ms Hargreaves, missed out a few things, but maybe she didn't have room? Anyhow, she is very good on all the literary references in TSH, especially the Classical stuff. She regurgitates the most interesting parts of DT's printed interviews (shame she couldn't get a new one for this book, but not surprising I guess!), and I came away even more convinced of what a weird, wonderful one-off novel TSH is. Which makes me terrified that DT's new one will suck, but we'll have to see...

Definitely recommended, unless you really do know everything about the book already!

This "readers guide" for Donna Tarrtt's "The Secret History" is thin on insight and value. While it is one step above "Cliffs Notes" in being both a summary and a "critical" work, it smacks of a first approximation of a better treatment that was then cut and slapped together on a thin budget and tight deadline. Literary criticism is a notoriously underpaid field (heck, folks posting here at AMAZON are giving it away for free), but still, readers are underserved by Hargreaves. Sad, for many of her observations and detail work teased out here have merit for discussion, and just as the reader is getting interested Hargreaves cuts off and moves on.

Hargreaves first chapter "The Novelist" is perhaps most useful for the curious Tartt stalker (yikes!), for it is an adequate thumbnail biography and summary of author details appearing in print elsewhere but in previously uncollected form. This chapter has no original content. Chapter two is the largest section and covers "The Novel" with a topical breakdown of characters, plot summary, setting, and main themes. Hargreaves correctly identifies many of Tartt's structures and literary techniques and devices, but in her "Conclusions" section on page 62 misses the point of the work entirely when she bald facedly states "There are no moral absolutes in the world that Tartt creates in her novel..." demonstrating that Hargreaves has completely missed a recurring leitmotif in the novel: Catholicism. Two chapters follow to pad out the work: "The Novel's Reception" and "The Novel's Performance" the last of which smacks of sour grapes and left me curious why they were not simply combined into a single chapter. The "Further Reading" section is perhaps the best, for it is nearly an annotated bibliography, and includes very nice summaries of obscure Tartt short pieces. The useless "Discussion Questions" left me fearful of the level of teaching of literature that goes on in Hargreaves's world, for not a single selected question raises the issue of religion in the work. Considering the central event of the novel, this is preposterous and misleading. Anyone who reads and thinks deserves better.

an intelligent thriller, but also a serious literary work. i recommend it to anyone who enjoys good writing