5 fabulous stars
I can't believe I waited so many years tor read such a brilliant, well thought out story. I'm not even sure how to review this, as so much of my review would be similar to the book and character analysis that's all over the internet that I think it would be redundant to have those thoughts repeated here.

Here are some of my notes as I was reading:
First 100 pages
- I’m so tempted to abandon this book
- Julian’s lecture is the most boring, pretentious, overly flowery piece of writing I’ve ever read
- Is Bunny seriously asking everyone what kind of pen they write with?? The absolute privilege of these kids
- These characters are so unlikeable and pretentious
- Richard is a LIAR. If he was a sim that would be one of his personality traits I think
- What are these 5 hiding from Richard?
- There’s something so suspicious about Julian… I get such bad vibes from him
- Is Donna Tart assuming the reader has some knowledge of Greek and/or classics/language? Because whenever it's up (quite often) I zone out
page 100+
- I think it was during Julian’s lecture portion that I was zoning out and wanting to DNF because I didn’t care but I find it otherwise interesting, and I can sense some dark undertones; that something ominous is heading towards us
Pg 240
- Bunny’s a bigot
- There’s something so off about Henry… I feel that underneath it all, he’s actually an empty person. I can’t help but think of that scene in the classroom where he casually talked about storming Hampden, and it felt a bit sociopathic to me
- Julian and Henry's relationship is so strange. I was surprised that Julian hasn’t really been in this book too much but maybe that’ll change. What I do know is that I get such an off feeling about him… like he’s completely morally bankrupt… I suppose we’ll see

Now that I'm finished:
There's not a minute where I fully liked any of these characters. There were times in the first half where I was able to look past their flaws and think they weren't too horrible, but that all got washed away in the second half of the book. It was amazing to watch the moral and psychological decline of everyone, to see this friendship group fall apart as they dealt with the repercussions of an act that they thought would save them.
It seems I was wrong about Henry. He's not a sociopath. He's a psychopath. One with an incredible amount of control I suppose.
Richard frustrates me, because there was so much opportunity for him to get out of this cultish friend group before it was too late, and yet he entrenched himself in their lives and sins. There's so much that can be said about him. But I think something worth remembering is that he comes from an abusive household, and when he saw the opportunity for familial love and affection with this group of friends, it wasn't really to surprising that he stayed where he was with them. I can see that Richard is smart, though I also felt that he let himself be taken advantage of by others in the group quite often, usually by Henry. Though I still don't understand his infatuation with Camilla, especially after all those years passed. it felt very unwarranted, especially when not once had she given any indication that she held any romantic feelings toward him.
I also don't like the way Richard and Francis treated Camilla when they found out how abusive Charles was being towards her. Instead of wanting her to escape him, they wanted her to move back in with him so that he would calm down since he would have her back? I suppose the casualness of the incest and the fluidness of sexuality in this book was supposed to be reminiscent of the practices of the Ancient Greek, an obviously huge theme in this book.
I could stand Richard for the most part, but when it came to Camilla I really wished he'd cut it out. And that paragraph with wanting to assault her, I'm still having trouble coming to terms with where that came from. I think it may be his own moral degeneration, similar to his lack of a moral response when he discovered the group killed someone.
I at first thought Julian didn't really feature in this book as much as I thought he would. But now I'm seeing that his physical presence doesn't meant that he wasn't actually there. He knew the group was doing bacchanals. He knows where Francis' aunts house is. He's smart enough to link the famers murder to them. When Richard quoted wha George Orwell thought of Julian, I was snapping my fingers along with him. He really bolted at the first sign of trouble, leaving the students that he'd been manipulating and isolating bereft.

I honestly have to many thoughts about this book that I could really go on for pages about each character and the plot. I fear that in time I'll come to forget the finer details about this story, and I'll just be left with the feeling of intrigue and disbelief, anger and melancholy. This one did quite a number on me. Perhaps in time I'll come to read it again. I really wish I had annotated!

The Secret History - Likewise Book Reviews

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