For context, I had read The Goldfinch before which I had loved, and right before reading TSH I had just finished William Faulkner's The Sound & The Fury, so the change of pace from a heady and dense work like TS&TF to something more contemporary and what I'd call "Pop" literature (If that's even a term, I come from a music background and I don't know what else to call something that in spite of its phenomenal quality it's still widely accesible and not as academic as something like, say, Joyce) might have really made the experience a much more fun roller coaster by contrast.
As always, I'd love to spark a discussion by talking about some of the things I loved and thought worked well in comparison to what I thought wasn't as good:
What I loved:
- The plot itself, while slow at first, is really gripping and I found it to be a succesful page turner. As much as I was never very fond of any of the characters I couldn't help but care deeply about the events in the novel and desperately wanting to find out what would happen.
- The characters themselves, although they're sometimes cartoony and almost always unlikeable, felt really effective and even If I never found, for example, Henry to be a believable character, I still felt like I had a good idea of his personality and I was engaged by his interactions with the main plot, and felt like I could, if I wanted to, try to guess his motives or have a clear idea of how he'd react to a piece of information. In short, the characters threaded a line between farcical and cartoony yet believable
- The prose flows beautifully and it threads a line between being poetic and expressive and still always immediatelly graspable and easily digestible which fits for the thriller genre.
- I like>! how quickly the gang descends into decadence after killing Bunny.!<
What I disliked:
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The narrator himself feels quite weak. While I do like that the main point is how biased he is when it comes to interpreting the motivations and personalities of the people around him, I just could never stand how much he put up with with the main cast for no apparent reason whatsoever. I never had a good idea as to WHY he loved Camilla so much, other than his cringy inner monologues about how pretty she is, or why he kept going back over and over to Henry in spite of it being obvious, even to the narrator, that Henry is a psychopath with no regard for anybody other than himself. I just found myself missing Theo from goldfinch.
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Camilla's character is basically non-existant at best and annoying at worst. The relationship the narrator has with her feels incredibly forced and superficial. I grew to dislike her almost as much as Bunny by the end of the novel.
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While I like the way Julian is utilized and the ambiguity of his relationship to Henry and his knowledge (or lackthereof) of the goings-on of the main cast is interesting, I felt he was underutilized. I liked how disgusting of a person he is shown to be at the end, but because he's barely in the book while simulataneously being such a big influence in the stories events, it just felt odd to me how little he's actually in the novel.
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I really don't think the novels length is justified, as there seemed to be a lot of sections which contributed very little to the narrative.
What did you think about it? Did you love it? Hate it? Why? Talk to me, strangers.
by ManuBekerMusic
27 Comments
I found that the characters were irritating pricks with motivations I found extremely hard to understand.
I loved it and tbh I see the negatives you raise as features not bugs (e.g. on the last the book is more about creating an atmosphere than rushing through a plot in minimal time)
I loved reading it, but the end left me puzzled. Like, what point was the author making? Or was it just a story?
what a coincidence?! i just finished reading it about 20 minutes or so.
love how clever tartt works the theme of elitism, the need to belong, and the pursuit of beauty.
I dislike how it has some very detailed parts about ordinary and loose moments, but I guess it will be making more sense in re-reading.
I noticed that Richard constantly reminisces about his poor past in the first half of the book or so, but as soon as he is fully integrated into the group, he does it less and less right up until the end.
The fact that Richard thought that he managed to hide his poor upbringing is hilarious: rich people know who’s like them. is not just about clothes and cars, but experiences, connections, histories – and Richard had none of that. Because of this, I fully believed that Henry used Richard until the very end, and Richard, in his willingness to belong, was very much blind.
I loved it. I remember not being overly sure of what decade it took place in until the very end with a reveal and it blew my mind.
I have a very love/hate relationship with this book. The Goldfinch is definitely my top 5, so I had high expectations for TSH. Tartt is great at writing an unreliable narrator that doesn’t even understand himself, much less be properly understood by the reader. I liked this in the goldfinch, but it felt kind of messy here. Like you said, there are times where nothing is being contributed to the narrative and it just feels like fragmented pieces of reality. This effect was in The Goldfinch too but served a clearer function, i think It’s honestly just her writing style atp.
It was hard for me to care about anything because the characters were SO unlikable. Pretentious rich folk *are* kind of fun to read about and Tartt does a good job conveying the extent of their wealth and their silly little lives, but that got old after a while. I guess im just biased because I miss the Theo/Boris dynamic that provided a wholesome break from the turmoil of Theo’s life. In TSH every character is made to feel a bit distant from the narrator 🙁
Loved it.
The characters are all obsessed with the notion of *character*, and I found that to be such an interesting dynamic. Richard himself, as narrator, is quite literally characterising them throughout.
Do I believe Richard is reliable? Absolutely not. He tells us as much on the first page. It’s also increasingly convenient how he finds himself at a peripheral distance from the group as the pivotal incidents unfold. Close enough to confirm other people’s guilt, but far enough to maintain his own relative innocence.
If Richard was close enough to Camilla to love her, how could he know nothing of her relationship with Charles? He was only close enough to the others to *like* them, so what is he missing about their lives?
I’ve tried several times to read it and just don’t like it. The characters seem like cartoon cutouts to me, and clueless. All the dated “old sport” crap and faux English upper class stuff was just too much for me. I know it’s famous and mentioned on several “must read” lists but I think I’m putting this in my “didn’t finish” pile.
The main character is supposed to be a big nothing. He doesn’t describe Camilla’s character because he doesn’t really know her (or any of the people in the group).
I loved the atmosphere of the book moreso than that actual book. Maybe an hour after I finished it I thought, okay what was the plot/purpose. I chalked it up to the book being more of a “people doing things/just living” literary work. I don’t mind reading those every so often.
Brilliant book! I think it was way better than The Goldfinch.
I see the main character as kind of a more pathetic Nick Caraway. He’s just kind of along for the ride, has very little agency but is captivated by the absurdity surrounding him. He’s *supposed* to be weak
I couldn’t put it down.
That said: I hated every character (on reflection, is anyone in this story not a piece of shit? Maybe the girl who lives down the hall?) and wish everyone was owed a comeuppance that never comes. I know it was intentionally written a certain way, but – I feel like less than half of the actual story is seen. Brilliant writing mechanism and style. Massive kudos to the author for pulling it off, even if it turns me off on any of their future work.
As an aside – the funeral felt like it went on and on and on and on. Lots of buildup with no real release. Maybe that’s a metaphor for the book?
Regarding the romance, I actually interpret >!Richard as gay or bisexual and heavily in denial. I think he’s obsessed with the idea of Camilla, and we as readers never meet the real version of her. !<
I feel like Richard and Camilla’s relationship is quite forced because it really doesn’t exist, no matter how much he wants it to
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I loved the book, I just was irritated at Henry, I don’t know why really.
I also just finished this a few days ago. It was definitely one of the best books I’ve read in a while, but due to some of the same negatives already pointed out, fell short of a perfect book rating from me. Nevertheless it was very enjoyable and reminded me just how much I enjoyed The Goldfinch when it came out.
Really? I found it so boring and the characters insufferable. I get that that’s the point but I couldn’t care less about their pretentious cocaine-fuelled escapades.
You are all invited to r/thesecrethistory. This book is so much fun to think about, possibly more than anything else I’ve ever read.
ALSO! Do any of you think >!Henry left the diary out on purpose for bunny to find? Did he want an excuse to kill him?!<
I got the audiobook read by her last year. She has such a particular voice that I cannot imagine “reading” it any other way.
Also liked the Goldfinch better, it was more accessible in terms of building a connection with the narrator and understanding his inner world. I was so annoyed with TSH the whole book because I couldn’t figure out WHEN it was taking place.
the characters embody the things i liked least about myself from that age. i think that’s why the resonate with me so much even though i think they’re so repulsive.
i did think henry was believable as were all the main characters. they come from extremely sheltered backgrounds and feared prison and other “lower class” things more than almost anything else. they had zero life experience, and in that context their seemingly insane actions make sense to me.
i think richard was able to love camilla so much precisely because she was such a blank. he could project anything he wanted into her blankness and lose himself in his fantasies and delusions.
i agree with you julian was underutilized. but possibly like camilla he is deliberately left a blank for his acolytes to project their own fantasies onto. if he made himself more available, and allowed them to see behind the fancy furniture and expensive pens, then the magic would be lost.
i did however find julian’s monologue/lecture extremely disappointing. that was his big set piece that was suppose to show what a magnetic personality he was, but it was like…meh?
i too initially thought julian was a giant turd for >!running off at the end!<. But after a while, i thought: what could he possibly have done?? he did obviously sincerely care about bunny. and now he had solid evidence, practically a confession, that >!his favorites had not only murdered once but twice, and had likely killed bunny in cold blood to cover it up!<.
he cared deeply about bunny but maybe he loved Henry too. it would take a far wiser person than julian to solve that puzzle.
i agree with ya the book could have been a lot shorter. the second half after the funeral was such a drag. the drug stuff was over done, so boring. richard’s >!spiral into paranoia and nervous breakdown!< was frankly boring too. henry was totally underutilized in the second half, and camilla and charles’ >!secret!< was lame.
but flaws and all i love the book because it captures so well what it means to be young and naive.
One thing that made no sense to me was how Julian was introduced (a mentor who was practically all-knowing and very involved in his students lives) vs his actions in the book (knew nothing, was surprised at the end, fled town).
I also just read this book and really liked it! I interpreted Richard differently and much more critically than you, he definitely portrays himself as a sad victim who can’t fit in but I don’t think that’s actually the case, I took him as more of an egotistical social climber/hanger on. Even in his unreliable narration he remembers normal people like his dorm mates, classmates, teachers, people at parties, etc etc constantly try to be his friend, try to sleep with him, invite him to their events, give him food and medicine and drugs, do favors for him even when he’s an ungrateful dickhead and help him out when he’s in need to a much more serious degree than basically anybody in the greek class, but he blows them off and has nothing but disdain for them because he’s obsessed with chasing his delusional aristocratic fantasy. In the epilogue he’s living large in LA with a hot popular dancer girlfriend who we see is very nice and well liked by everybody, and he’s still a pathetic whiner. I took his conversation with Henry at the end of the book as the keystone in that theme, I think Henry is right when he clocks Richard as another narcissistic psychopath.
I also took the one sided, forced nature of Richard’s relationship with Camilla and her non-existent personality in Richard’s retelling of events as a manifestation of that same theme. Richard actually doesn’t know anything about her and doesn’t actually care about her as a person, just as another facet of his aristocratic fantasy. He’s so oblivious to her feelings and actions that he can’t tell she’s in love with Henry even though Francis confirms it’s been obvious to everyone the whole time, same thing with the nature of Camilla’s relationship with Charles which was also very clear to literally everyone but Richard because he doesn’t actually care about knowing her at all.
I really loved this book. It’s interesting because I read it years ago and have forgotten quite a lot of the plot details! But the overall dark/twisty nature of the book has really stayed with me. I don’t know if I’ve ever read anything that has quite the same feel!