Hannah
The Secret History captured me immediately with it's opening line.
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.
This one sentence captures the magic of the novel itself - lyrical but with a strong sense of place that doesn't distance itself from the action. I was also surprised by the absolutely wild plot and the intense set of characters who slowly disintegrate like a slow burn thriller. I honestly went in expecting something slightly boring and pretentious. The most pulse racing aspect of this is not fast, it is patient. The murders have happened, the culprits have gotten away. Then we spend the latter half of the book observing the slow psychological decline of all involved while the rose-colored glasses are removed from our eyes. The beautiful charming twins become an incest-filled pattern of abuse, the brilliant leader is an psychopathic cliche with grandiose tendencies who poisons dogs (the bastard), the enigmatic professor is just a coward who enabled his students to feel entitled to murder. This descent merges in interesting ways with lectures from said professor and kicked off a lot of pondering for me on aesthetic academics and the psychological impact of feeling that you exist in a sphere above the common folk.
Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so?...Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and nothing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skimmed knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own...Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?"
In my view, Richard remained the only slightly sympathetic character because his own poverty and the peek into his home situation reveal the desperation that led him to tolerate and assist in his new rich friends' horrible actions. Even the reader initially falls into the dream with him - a life where all his friends graduate together and live together forever in that nice country home where nothing ever changes. Only he seems to internally struggle both during and after Bunny's murder, to him Bunny was part of that dream.
I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head. Is seemed impossible then that one could ever be angry with him. These were the times he chose to attack...I would vow not to forget it again. I broke that promise many times. I was about to say it was a promise I finally had to keep, but that's not really true. Even today, I can't muster anything resembling anger at Bunny. In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair... saying "Dickie my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight?"
I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which is fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at 12..."who is in control here?" I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?
The gist of all this is that being able to quote text in Greek and Latin doesn't excuse you from living a moral life or put you above the constraints of society. Even if you get away with this breaking of moral boundaries, you cannot escape from yourself: "I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."
The Secret History captured me immediately with it's opening line.
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.
This one sentence captures the magic of the novel itself - lyrical but with a strong sense of place that doesn't distance itself from the action. I was also surprised by the absolutely wild plot and the intense set of characters who slowly disintegrate like a slow burn thriller. I honestly went in expecting something slightly boring and pretentious. The most pulse racing aspect of this is not fast, it is patient. The murders have happened, the culprits have gotten away. Then we spend the latter half of the book observing the slow psychological decline of all involved while the rose-colored glasses are removed from our eyes. The beautiful charming twins become an incest-filled pattern of abuse, the brilliant leader is an psychopathic cliche with grandiose tendencies who poisons dogs (the bastard), the enigmatic professor is just a coward who enabled his students to feel entitled to murder. This descent merges in interesting ways with lectures from said professor and kicked off a lot of pondering for me on aesthetic academics and the psychological impact of feeling that you exist in a sphere above the common folk.
Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so?...Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and nothing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skimmed knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own...Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?"
In my view, Richard remained the only slightly sympathetic character because his own poverty and the peek into his home situation reveal the desperation that led him to tolerate and assist in his new rich friends' horrible actions. Even the reader initially falls into the dream with him - a life where all his friends graduate together and live together forever in that nice country home where nothing ever changes. Only he seems to internally struggle both during and after Bunny's murder, to him Bunny was part of that dream.
I forgave him, a hundred times over, and never on the basis of anything more than this: a look, a gesture, a certain tilt of his head. Is seemed impossible then that one could ever be angry with him. These were the times he chose to attack...I would vow not to forget it again. I broke that promise many times. I was about to say it was a promise I finally had to keep, but that's not really true. Even today, I can't muster anything resembling anger at Bunny. In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair... saying "Dickie my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight?"
I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which is fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at 12..."who is in control here?" I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?
The gist of all this is that being able to quote text in Greek and Latin doesn't excuse you from living a moral life or put you above the constraints of society. Even if you get away with this breaking of moral boundaries, you cannot escape from yourself: "I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell."