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The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

bookshelves: to-swoon-over, currently-reading

Reading for the 6th time

read in September 2024

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❦ said: " some people might not like this book because of its unreliable narration, yet that's what i love the most about this book!

it's obvious that Richard is unreliable because he has a tendency to romanticize... things, especially his friends. we'll get to some people might not like this book because of its unreliable narration, yet that's what i love the most about this book!

it's obvious that Richard is unreliable because he has a tendency to romanticize... things, especially his friends. we'll get to this one soon. i just want to put the lights on how Richard makes us believe that he fits in. this, among other reasons, is because Richard refuses to see things the way they are, and that he is ignorant to the things happening around him if it doesn't concern him, hence the distortion between reality and whatever Richard wants us to believe happened. he said:

It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don't know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical these days.

the easiest instances of this is him being 'unaware' of his friends' dynamics, especially between Henry-Camilla, or Francis-Charles, or even Camilla-Charles.

and i'd like to say that whatever happened between him and Camilla is just like everything else that happened between him and his other friends: in his head! was that one scene necessary for the plot/tension/shock value? no! but it was, at some point, still an attempt of him trying to fit in (i don't know how to articulate this better).

this narration of Richard fitting in makes me see something it's actually not: that Richard is actually just as accountable as everyone else in the murder. he's not a part of the group, right from the start to the end; that's why the main 'key' to Bunny's murder was Richard. Bunny telling Richard about the incident equals Bunny telling anyone else about it. (view spoiler)

another thing Richard was good at is putting subtle favoritism through his narration. through engaging with the discourse surrounding this book i found out that some people dislike some of the characters, because, well, they rely on Richard's heavily unreliable depiction of his friends.

(view spoiler)

to say i enjoyed this book would be an understatement. i'm obsessed. donna tartt is a genius. i keep finding new details everytime i read this book and i don't think this would be the last time of me reading the secret history. and had Richard not been an unreliable narrator, the book wouldn't receive this much stars and acknowledgement! ...more "

progress:

(page 349 of 559)
— May 09, 2026 11:28PM

Aug 05, 2025 11:34PM · see review