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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