3 ms·

I read it for the first time earlier this year and it's probably the best novel I read in 2022. It's one of those books I wish I'd discovered years ago. If any

I read it for the first time earlier this year and it's probably the best novel I read in 2022. It's one of those books I wish I'd discovered years ago. If anyone else can recommend something like it please let me know.

SL61 4y ago
Depending on what you liked about The Secret History, you might enjoy The Goldfinch from the same author. It has the same basic concept of wealthy, pretentious young adults making bad choices, but it's set in NYC and Las Vegas instead of a rural liberal arts college. It's written 20 years after TSH and it's quite a bit more polished, for better or worse.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > It has the same basic concept of wealthy, pretentious young adults making bad choices, but it's set in NYC and Las Vegas instead of a rural liberal arts college. This (the original, not the Vegas-and-NYC thing) complete with the liberal arts college (or New England prep school) setting, is practically a little sub-genre all its own. Some kind of consequence of a high percentage of people who go on to write novels going through the prep-school-to-liberal-arts-college path (as Graeber notes in Bullshit Jobs, it's a whole lot easier to succeed in most sorts of literary careers when you can afford to go years on end with little or no pay, early in adulthood) plus write-what-you-know. There are tons and tons of books like that, some of them famous and others not.
ubermonkey 4y ago
I have been mildly disappointed by Tartt's follow-up works, but even more disappointed by her pace. Since TSH was published in 1992, she's written only two other novels: * The Little Friend, in 2002, which is set in her native Mississippi; and * The Goldfinch, in 2013, which won big prizes (including a Pulitzer), but is to my tastes inferior to the other two. Her once-a-decade pattern suggests another book should be coming along any year now, but who can tell? I mentioned uptopic that mystery writer Tana French included an homage to The Secret History in the second book of her "Dublin Murder Squad" series. It's worth reading, but I'm not sure how "like" Tartt it really is. What makes French's series interesting is the shifting points of view within the same (fictional) Dublin bureau -- the first book is from the POV of a given character, and then the second shifts to someone who was a supporting character in the first book, and so forth.
- eigenhombre 4y ago
  I'm a big fan of both French's and Tartt's books, especially these two (TSH, and The Likeness). Likeness does evoke TSH, certainly, but is definitely its own story with a fascinating "MacGuffin" (which I won't spoil here) -- providing enough psychological depth to reward repeated rereading, even once you know how it turns out. Also, it actually is a murder mystery, which TSH arguably isn't.

SL61 4y ago

Depending on what you liked about The Secret History, you might enjoy The Goldfinch from the same author. It has the same basic concept of wealthy, pretentious young adults making bad choices, but it's set in NYC and Las Vegas instead of a rural liberal arts college. It's written 20 years after TSH and it's quite a bit more polished, for better or worse.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> It has the same basic concept of wealthy, pretentious young adults making bad choices, but it's set in NYC and Las Vegas instead of a rural liberal arts college. This (the original, not the Vegas-and-NYC thing) complete with the liberal arts college (or New England prep school) setting, is practically a little sub-genre all its own. Some kind of consequence of a high percentage of people who go on to write novels going through the prep-school-to-liberal-arts-college path (as Graeber notes in Bullshit Jobs, it's a whole lot easier to succeed in most sorts of literary careers when you can afford to go years on end with little or no pay, early in adulthood) plus write-what-you-know. There are tons and tons of books like that, some of them famous and others not.

ubermonkey 4y ago

I have been mildly disappointed by Tartt's follow-up works, but even more disappointed by her pace. Since TSH was published in 1992, she's written only two other novels: * The Little Friend, in 2002, which is set in her native Mississippi; and * The Goldfinch, in 2013, which won big prizes (including a Pulitzer), but is to my tastes inferior to the other two. Her once-a-decade pattern suggests another book should be coming along any year now, but who can tell? I mentioned uptopic that mystery writer Tana French included an homage to The Secret History in the second book of her "Dublin Murder Squad" series. It's worth reading, but I'm not sure how "like" Tartt it really is. What makes French's series interesting is the shifting points of view within the same (fictional) Dublin bureau -- the first book is from the POV of a given character, and then the second shifts to someone who was a supporting character in the first book, and so forth.

eigenhombre 4y ago
I'm a big fan of both French's and Tartt's books, especially these two (TSH, and The Likeness). Likeness does evoke TSH, certainly, but is definitely its own story with a fascinating "MacGuffin" (which I won't spoil here) -- providing enough psychological depth to reward repeated rereading, even once you know how it turns out. Also, it actually is a murder mystery, which TSH arguably isn't.