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The Secret History: A Read with Jenna Pick - by Donna Tartt (Hardcover)
$29.26 sale price when purchased online
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Target Online store #3991
About this item
Highlights
- A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK - ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch.
- About the Author: DONNA TARTT is the author of the novels The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch.
- 576 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Mystery & Detective
Description
About the Book
A dazzling feat of psychological suspense: a big, richly textured, and hypnotic novel of golden youth corrupted by its own moral arrogance. In a calm voice, Richard recalls--years after the fact--how he came to a small uppercrust New England college, was amazed to be accepted into its ultimate inner circle, and was enmeshed in a murderous plot.Book Synopsis
A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK - ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME - INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch. One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. "A remarkably powerful novel [and] a ferociously well-paced entertainment . . . Forceful, cerebral, and impeccably controlled." --The New York TimesFrom the Back Cover
Storytelling in the grand manner, The Secret History is a debut remarkable for its hypnotic erudition and acute psychological suspense, and for the richness of its emotions, ideas, and language. These are the confessions, years afterward, of a young man who found at a small Vermont college the life of privilege and intellect he'd long coveted - and rarely has the glorious experience of youth infatuated with knowledge and with itself been so achingly realized. Then, amazed, Richard Papen is drawn into the ultimate inner circle: five students, worldly and self-assured, selected by a charismatic classics professor to participate in the search for truth and beauty. Together they study the mysteries of ancient Greek culture and spend long weekends at an old country house, reading, boating, basking in an Indian summer that stretches late into autumn. Mesmerized by his new comrades, Richard is unaware of the crime which they have committed in his dreamy, unwitting presence. But once taken into their confidence, he and the others slowly and inevitably begin to believe in the necessity of murdering the one classmate and friend who might betray both their secret and their future. Hugely ambitious and compulsively readable, this is a chronicle of deception and complicity, of Dionysian abandon, of innocence corrupted by self-love and moral arrogance; and, finally, it is a story of guilt and responsibility. An astonishing achievement by any standard, The Secret History immediately establishes Donna Tartt as a supremely gifted novelist.Review Quotes
"A beautifully written story, well-told, funny, sad, scary, and impossible to leave alone until I finished. . . . What a debut!" --John Grisham "Powerful . . . Enthralling . . . A ferociously well-paced entertainment." --The New York Times "An accomplished psychological thriller . . . Absolutely chilling . . . Tartt has a stunning command of the lyrical." -- The Village Voice "A smart, craftsman-like, viscerally compelling novel." --Time "A thinking-person's thriller . . . Think Lord of the Flies, then The Rules of Attraction. . . . The Secret History combines a bit of both--the unmistakable whiff of evil from William Golding's classic and the mad recklessness of priviledged youth from Bret Easton Ellis's novel of the '80s. . . . As stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed." --New York Newsday "Tartt's voice is unlike that of any of her contemporaries. Her beautiful language, intricate plotting, fascinating characters, and intellectual energy make her debut by far the most interesting work yet from her generation." --The Boston Globe "A long tale of friendship, arrogance, and murder knit together with the finesse that many writers will never have . . . Her writing bewitches us . . . The Secret History is a wonderfully beguiling book, a journey backward to the fierce and heady friendships of our school days, when all of us believed in our power to conjure up divinity and to be forgiven any sin." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "The great pleasure of the novel is the wonderful complexity and the remarkable skill with which this first novelist spins the tale. And a gruesome tale it is. . . . A great, dense, disturbing story, wonderfully told." --Cosmopolitan "The Secret History implicates the reader in a conspiracy which begins in bucolic enchantment and ends exactly where it must--though a less gifted or fearless writer would never have been able to imagine such a rich skein of consequence. Donna Tartt has written a mesmerizing and powerful novel." --Jay McInerney "Donna Tartt has invested this simple and suspenseful plot with a considerable amount of atmosphere and philosophical significance. . . . She's a very good writer indeed." --The Washington Post Book World "A glorious achievement . . . The Secret History is a grand read--an artful blend of intelligence, entertainment, and suspense that quickens the pulse." --The Virginian Pilot & Ledger-Star
"Beautifully written, suspenseful from start to finish." --Vogue "One of the best American college novels to come along since John Knowles's A Seperate Peace. . . . Immensely entertaining." --Houston Chronicle "Donna Tartt is clearly a gifted writer. . . . The cadence of her sentences, the authority with which she shaped 500-plus pages of an erudite page-turner indicate she has the ability to leave her literary contemporaries standing in the road. . . . The decision to murder has about it the inevitability of classical Greek tragedy." --The Miami Herald "Donna Tartt has a real shot at becoming her generation's Edgar Allan Poe. . . . The Secret History pulses like a telltale heart on steroids." --Glamour
About the Author
DONNA TARTT is the author of the novels The Secret History, The Little Friend, and The Goldfinch. Her work has been published in forty languages and her third novel, The Goldfinch, was awarded the Carnegie Medal and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.Dimensions (Overall): 9.5 Inches (H) x 5.9 Inches (W) x 1.59 Inches (D)
Weight: 1.74 Pounds
Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up
Number of Pages: 576
Genre: Fiction + Literature Genres
Sub-Genre: Mystery & Detective
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Theme: General
Format: Hardcover
Author: Donna Tartt
Language: English
Street Date: September 5, 1992
TCIN: 94024573
UPC: 9780679410324
Item Number (DPCI): 247-16-6075
Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
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Shipping details
Estimated ship dimensions: 1.59 inches length x 5.9 inches width x 9.5 inches height
Estimated ship weight: 1.74 pounds
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