Resumo de The Secret History

When I first came across The Secret History in the bookshop, I
checked it out in the hope that it was a historical novel based on Procopius''
history of the same title (a contemporary behind the scenes account
of sixth century Byzantium). Though this was not the case ? and I ended up
reading Tartt''s novel much later on the recommendation of friends ? the
identity of names is not a complete coincidence. The Secret History
tells the story of the classical Greek class, six students and their teacher,
at a liberal arts college on the east coast of the United States, through the
reminiscences of one of those students. These seven characters dominate the
novel completely, standing forth with the clarity and intensity of actors in a Greek
tragedy. The normal events of college life ? the drug-dealing, the
sex, the suicides ?, which would have been the subject of most novels with this
setting, end up being relegated to insignificance; they are simply the backdrop
to the terrible drama that unfolds.

Despite the first person narration, the narrator''s personality does not
intrude into the novel. He is a passive, almost recording"
character, who discovers rather than initiates, and who plays the role the
chorus would have played in a real tragedy; he comments on the action and his
hindsight replaces prophecy as the voice of fate. I could go on at length about
other literary devices and parallels, and indeed many of them are explicitly
raised; The Secret History is sprinkled with literary references. (The
obvious comparison to Crime and Punishment is made by both the blurb
on my copy and one of the characters.) This is never done artificially,
however, and genuine authorial/narratorial insight is combined with
appropriateness to the context and characterization.

Hopefully this will not have turned off potential readers without an
interest in the classics. The Secret History is a thriller at heart, a
very effective psychological thriller where the tension is provided by the
gradual revelation of the threads and links in the weave of relationships
between the central characters rather than by uncertainty (the murder which centers
the book is described in the prologue). Tartt has managed to combine the
complexity and careful detail of a novel with the beautiful and terrible
simplicity of drama, and The Secret History is one of the more
engaging works of fiction I have read for some time.

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