The Secret History

Categories: Mystery & Suspense , Rediscoveries , Staff Picks , Fiction

“The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation." 

That’s the first line of Donna Tartt’s cult classic The Secret History, and the first time I read the sentence, I was hooked.   

When narrator and native Californian Richard Papen transfers to Hampden College in Vermont, he joins an exclusive group of five other students studying ancient Greek taught by an eccentric professor.  Gradually Richard earns their trust and becomes privy to the group’s secret history: they accidentally murdered a farmer during their recreation of an ancient Greek bacchanal. 

One of the members, Bunny Corcorran, did not participate in the bacchanal and learns of the murder.  As Bunny threatens to reveal their secret, Richard must decide whether to go along with their decision to silence him.  

The Secret History was Donna Tartt's first novel and made her a literary sensation before it was ever published in 1992.  Begun during her second year at Vermont’s Bennington College, the manuscript sparked a publishers' bidding war, with Alfred A. Knopf buying it for $450,000.  The book went on to become a national and international bestseller.

When ten years went by without a second novel, Tartt’s fans speculated that her career was destined to follow that of other famous writers whose literary promise ended after the first book.  Rather, she chose to remain out of the public eye while writing her eagerly awaited The Little Friend (2002).