The Secret History

I decided to finally read Donna Tartt's popular and celebrated first novel The Secret History (1992), since it takes place at a fictional college in Vermont. It was to be background reading for my first visit to the "The Green Mountain State." It is essentially a literary thriller with many asides to classical studies since the novel follows a group of classics students at a small liberal arts college. The novel tries to explain why a crime was committed rather who committed it-that is revealed very early in the novel. I think the structure is basically sound, but I found large passages about characters worrying and suffering from guilt excessive and it slowed me down as a reader. I am of the school of the short and sweet crime fiction of writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Elmore Leonard, and Charles Willeford. I think it would have been a much more satisfying read at 300 pages rather than the 500 plus that it was published at.