A Disappointment of Epic Proportions

I read The Secret History by Donna Tartt a number of years ago. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. From trying to figure out exactly when it was supposed to have taken place ("They're reading People and watching bad television, but they didn't know men had walked on the moon") to trying to figure out exactly who I should be rooting for ("I hate Bunny. No. Wait. Poor Bunny. I hate Henry."), I loved it. I loved the atmosphere of the book--the feeling of long, disconnected winter evenings, driving into the country to spend a weekend at a house you've never been to, filled with someone else's antiques. I loved that it was set in Vermont, where I went to school, in a town that was much like the one in which I lived for three years. I loved the characters, which reminded me of people I went to school with--a collection of odd individuals you would never think to look for outside of a rural valley town in Central Vermont: former Army Rangers, stock market players, prep school escapees, heroin addicts, homosexuals, a larger number of Republicans than you might have thought, people who couldn't form coherent sentences, public policy wonks, mountain climbers, anarchists, environmentalists and brewers.

I remember recommending the book to my friend, Jason. Jason and I have a long history (there's the word again) of suggesting books to each other. I gave him a dictionary when we graduated from high school. He sent me a book of poetry when my dad died. He got me into David Foster Wallace. I told him he needed to read House of Leaves. And The Secret History.

He liked it. Probably not as much as me. But he went to school in Vermont, too. Not the same place I went. But in a way, exactly the same place I went. Because it had its collection of freaks, too. And the winters got cold just as early. And it got dark just as soon. The mornings at his school were filled with blue light reflecting off snow, just like it did outside of my window. The river froze there, too.

I waited for a long time to get her next book, The Little Friend. It looked good. I knew it was about a murder in a small southern town. Yet again, a subject I could relate to, having grown up in the South, although not in a small town. It was thick. It had a creepy cover. I couldn't wait.

I finally checked it out of the library. I was part right. The beginning was great. The premise was great. A murder. A little girl. A mystery. A small town. All the makings of a really good, creepy story, not unlike her first book.

But there was absolutely, positively no payoff. No resolution. No finale. I put the book down, completely pissed off. What? The hell? Was that? When I read a mystery, or something purporting to be mysterious, I want some kind of...justification. Justification that I just spent upteen hours plowing through this brick of a book. Instead, she gets caught in a water tower? Huh? And her brother? What the hell happened to the brother?

So I sulked about the book for a while. But was happy I'd checked it out from the library, rather than buying it.

Then Jason called. I thought I could warn him, get to him early enough to save him.

Me: Hey, you haven't read that new Tartt book, have you?
Jason: Oh. My. God. That SUCKED! What the hell? With the watertower? And the snakes? What the f$#&!

I'll leave out the remainder of his rant, as this is a family blog. But you get the drift. He proceeding to rail against the book for a good 25 minutes or so. I just nodded, not caring that he couldn't see me over the phone. He didn't want my support or agreement. Just my ear.

I reread The Secret History this weekend. It is one of those books where you're always finding a different nuance, a different feeling about the storyline. I had forgotten some of what happened. Actually, I'd forgotten most of what happened. I did remember, however, the feeling it gave me to read it. The feelings of long, cold winter nights in a big house full of someone else's furniture. The feeling of living in a bit of a fishbowl, with everyone paying attention to you out of the corner of their eye. The feeling that, should you walk out your door and across the town green at 3 a.m., you'll still manage to bump into someone you know. And the feeling that you might learn something about them that you didn't know before. I finished it and was so sad that she hasn't written anything else. Well, anything else that I would read.