Staff Pick
The Secret History by Donna Tartt was the beginning of my obsession with school stories. It is so creepy and odd, and so much like a train wreck from which I couldn't look away. To immerse myself in this book was like living in rarified air, so rich, so deep with history, so exclusive, so unlike my own life. I couldn't get enough. So many, many, many school stories later, this one is still the best. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
THE BESTSELLER THAT DEFINED AN AGE
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh oh oh '
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.
'Haunting, compelling and brilliant' The Times
'Irresistible and seductive' Guardian
'Enthralling... Forceful, cerebral and impeccably controlled' New York Times