The Secret History - By Donna Tartt

 The Secret History by Donna Tartt is an older book (published in 1992) that, somehow, I missed when it first came out. It is the perfect Fall Seasonal read, set in elite Hampden College in Hampden,Vermont. The aesthetic is tweed coats, wooden-panelled private clubs, old books and libraries - what Pinterest would classify as Dark Academia. From a literary perspective, it has been called Neo-Romanticism. What could be more Autumnal than that?

"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 in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen."

The story begins, similarly to The Glass Hotel , another inverted detective story, by telling you that someone has been murdered. You know who, you even know how, but you read on to know why. Narrated by outsider/loner Richard, you also are drawn into the world of the close knit and mysterious world of five strange yet enigmatic Greek scholars and their unusual teacher. 

When Richard becomes drawn into the murder plot, he becomes witness to the psychological effects that committing and premeditating the act has on himself as well as the others in the group. 

"Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs."

You Will Like This Book If:

• you love the Dark Academia aesthetic
• you long for the lifestyle of a small, liberal arts college
• you like psychological  mysteries

Best Quote:

"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not."