I chose to review The Secret History by Donna Tart, a novel that follows Richard Papen, a young man from a lower-class California family who attends a small liberal arts college in Vermont to study the classics. He becomes consumed in a tight-knit group of Ancient Greek students who are as mysterious as they are exclusive. Slowly, he is welcomed into their company and begins to form connections with each of his peers, but as he does, he becomes increasingly concerned about their secretive nature and convinced they are hiding something from him. Once he gains their trust, they share that they accidentally killed a man and covered it up. The novel climaxes when the group carries out another murder of one of their friends, who they believe will rat them out to the cops. While the plot is very dramatic and suspenseful, the book mostly focuses on the relationships between the characters in the book and how extreme circumstances affect them. While Richard is lower-class and on scholarship, most of his peers are extremely wealthy and we follow him as he navigates and attempts to infiltrate their world. While he is just as good of a student as them and a kind, loyal friend, he constantly must prove himself in order to upwardly climb the social ladder. Even though the people he associates with are bad people– homophobic, classist, and, as he finds out, murders– he continues to strive for their approval and acceptance. The illusion that he is their equal and wields the same amount of power as they do in their friendship is what causes him to lose himself completely. In the process he reshapes his entire identity and, at the conclusion of the novel, still remains an outsider. Even the reader becomes enchanted by their lifestyle, intelligence, and exclusivity, ignoring their obvious faults. This tragic story highlights wealth inequality and the heights people will go to just to belong.
