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Summary: luxe thriller may not be so brainy - but is this the point?
Review: Within the first few pages, Tartt has protagonist Richard say it all - the motivating force here is a certain weakness for the picturesque. And if you also have one, then you too are Tartt's creature, and this is your book. Sometimes castigated for not being the intellectual contender press people like to say it is, the Secret History is nonetheless compelling, and awfully hypnotic. Its obsessive characters (who aim, perhaps with irony, but nonetheless w/ clear intent, to shack up someplace stately and "study the twleve great civilizations"), its confined spaces, its atmosphere of preordained and yet still dangerously haphazard events, compose into something haunting, and eerily beautiful. Also, Tartt's attempt to invest the book with the shadowed presence of another culture - that of ancient greece - has its effect. She manages to get a whiff of the exotic and austere on the air and, if it's not the language lesson some might be wanting, so much the better. Essentially, Tartt is writing the college novel few have the courage to write anymore - not one that's smug, or banal, but one that tackles directly the soul of those years, and that ardent, fierce desire to remake the self. Henry, Charles, Camilla and Francis may merely be sporting around in the New England night, drunk and in bedsheets, but for a brief second they spot the divine. It allows for consequences of character that more "realistic" maundering could not accomplish, and it leads to far more than a novel focused on frat hazing and youthful aimlessness could ever do.
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Summary: Even better the sixth time
Review: This novel just keeps getting better every time I read it. I am apprehensively awaiting the movie, as even though I know it could never live up to the novel, I will be the first one in line when it (finally) opens. Fortunately for me, next week will be the second time I'll study the novel for a lit. course. I can't wait--I am always interested in the reactions of first time readers. There isn't anything better than getting credit for studying a novel you read for fun! Unlike most of my fellow English teachers, I am not a big fan of rigidly teaching the canon. Unfortunately, many English teachers are inclined to do so, so I desperately hope Tartt will find her way in for our students' sakes. Until then, I hope more teachers will teach this novel anyway.
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Summary: HATED IT!
Review: Just kidding-wanted to make my comment stand out a little. The Secret History was seriously one of my favorite books of all time (and I've read A LOT of books and am VERY critical.) I'm so glad I listened to my friend's recommendation to read this book and if you are reading my comment and haven't read it yet-what are you waiting for? All the rave reviews you've been reading so far, can't be wrong. I welcome future works by the author with open arms....
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Summary: Great insight in the deep rooted inner blackness of mankind.
Review: I think Donna Tartt very nicely illustrated the inner blackness of mankind, which still influences actions, despite the apparent progress our species has made....Something to think about, when saying tha we are simply 'better' than other creatures on this planet, because our primal reactions in situations of great thread haven't evolved at all..
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Summary: The only book I've ever read twice
Review: Please, please, Donna, write another book! A book blessed with characters as richly engrosing and hauntingly meaningful as the ones found in The Secret History. Anyone longing for a window back to their college days, whether they were spent at Yale or Ole Miss, should read this book. The prose, and the way it unravels mysteries already clear to the reader, make the pages turn almost by themselves.
Rating:
Summary: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Review: Definately one of my favorite novels. Not only was I sad to finish this but I've not found anything I like as well since I read this book. I'd welcome email suggestions from anyone who might offer reading recommendations for simular reads. I'd sure enjoy another Donna Tartt novel.
Rating: 
Summary: An entertaining and evocative novel, a sign of the times
Review: I got this book as a high school graduation gift, and began reading it to the Indigo Girls' "Rites of Passage" album. At first it seemed a frightful warning of what was ahead, and only after a few months at a real college did I realize that life was, for better or for worse, more banal than it was at Hampden. The brilliance of Tartt's nove; lies in her ability to make each character, no matter how heinous his/her actions, somewhat sympathetic. Everyone is at once good and evil, arrogant and insecure, ambitious and lazy. The settings are described with such attention to atmosphere and detail that I can picture myself in them. The only thing I would change about this book would be to cut down on the foreign language phrases and edit a few drawn-out scenes. But overall, the book was appropriately descriptive, with a leisurely pace and a perfect balance between the beautiful and the grotesque.
Rating: 
Summary: Specious, but not uninteresting
Review: I was attracted to the book because I was curious about what intellectual curlicues peculiar to the classics might, under some circumstances, prompt students of philology to become murderous. Thus I was disappointed to find, midway through the book, that the fact that homicidal scholars study the classics is merely incidental, which unfortunately reduces the book to a rather ordinary murder mystery. Having said that, the book never really announces itself as a tale explaining how some aristophrenic New Englanders, in the process of being carried away by a Bachannalian lifestyle, come to murder their friend, so perhaps I'm being captious. Nevertheless, be warned: the classics is merely an ornamenatal appendage to the plot, and contributes virtually nothing to the praxis of the tale.Alarm bells rang when I saw the dedication to Brett Easton Ellis, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book is imaginatively written in reasonably refined prose. Indeed, this is the main reason why it it is worth a read, and why you'll likely find yourself forgiving it for an ending that peters out on a pretty feeble, pseudo-enigmatic note.
Rating:
Summary: Darkly Seductive
Review: What delighted me most about this novel was the way things were never what they appeared, and each character had their own secret agenda. I don't love it to the degree that other readers do; I found the trip to and back from the funeral too long, and the drug use got repetitive. But I still got more out of it than I do out of ten or twenty typical contemporary novels. Another psychological thriller that recently blew me away is John Fowles' novel "The Collector", considered by some to be the first modern psychological thriller (1963). I highly recommend it.
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Summary: This book has stuck with me
Review: i read this book one weekend when it first came out. i had just returned from an extended trip to Guatemala and was sick with the flu. It was a wet, cold rainy LA weekend - i had a fire going, layed down on the sofa and got lost in this book. I have referred it to a number of people who i knew would just get it like i did. it wasn't anything in particular it's just a great read. i can tell you every detail of my experience while reading it for the first time - from the music i had playing to the food i ate. i think about this alot. i read widely with diversity - this was a find and it remains very close to me. Where is Donna Tartts next effort?
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