Read With Us: Why You Should Get Involved With a Bunch of Awful Characters

Our current Read With Us book is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Kym, Carole and I have somewhat of a tough job promoting this book. This is my attempt to explain why I think you should read The Secret History—even if the characters are awful. 

If you’ve ever been intrigued by dark academia, fictional murder, or the idea of losing yourself in a beautifully written, haunting novel, The Secret History is a book you shouldn’t miss. It’s a novel that pulls you deep into a world of elitist intellectualism, ancient rituals, and a crime committed by a group of people you probably wouldn’t want to be friends with. And yet, you won’t be able to look away.

It's a story of privilege, obsession, and tragedy. At the heart of The Secret History is an elite group of Classics students at a prestigious New England college, led by the enigmatic and charismatic professor, Julian Morrow. These students are pretentious, manipulative, and often deeply unlikable, but that’s part of what makes them so compelling. Tartt crafts them with such psychological depth that their flaws feel disturbingly real. You may not like them, but you’ll hopefully understand them.

The novel is narrated by Richard Papen, an outsider who desperately wants to belong. He gets swept up in the world of his privileged classmates, Henry, Francis, Charles, Camilla, and Bunny, until he becomes complicit in their dangerous secrets. As the story unfolds, we see how their obsession with the ancient world and their own intellectual superiority leads them down a path of moral decay and, ultimately, murder.

You may be asking yourself, "Why should I care about these unlikable characters?" Some readers hesitate when they hear a book has “unlikable characters.” But in The Secret History, this is exactly what makes the novel so powerful. These characters force us to confront human nature at its most arrogant and flawed. Their moral ambiguity makes them fascinating to read about, much like the Greek tragedies they revere.

It’s also refreshing to read a novel that doesn’t sugarcoat its protagonists. Rather than being forced to root for them, you’re invited to analyze them, to question their motives, and to see the chilling consequences of their actions. The result? A reading experience that feels immersive, intoxicating, and unforgettable.

At its core, The Secret History is deeply rooted in the study of Classics, particularly in the themes of fate, hubris, and the power of the gods. One of the most significant literary influences is Euripides’ The Bacchae, a play about the destructive power of Dionysian ecstasy. The students, inspired by their studies, attempt to recreate an ancient Bacchic ritual—an experience that goes horribly wrong. Their desperate need to transcend the mundane leads to irreversible consequences, echoing the tragedies of the ancient world they idolize. You may be more well-versed in the Classics than I was, but I understood the book better after I read about Euripides' play and the Maenads. Julian (the Classics professor) says “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it,”, foreshadowing his students’ fates by drawing parallels to Euripides’ Maenads. Maenads were the female worshipers of the God Dionysus, and in Euripides’ play The Bacchae, they murder King Pentheus for banning them from worshiping their god. Like King Pentheus, Bunny Corcoran will later be lured into the woods by his own friends in an effort to avoid answering for their crimes. Despite the graphic violence of The Bacchae, bacchanals are romanticized by Julian in The Secret History, as he speaks of them as a sort of spiritual cleansing, a cathartic release of "primitive impulses".

Much like the doomed characters in The Bacchae, the students in The Secret History believe they can control what they don’t fully understand. Their intellectual arrogance leads them to believe they can stand above morality, but Tartt masterfully shows how hubris always brings ruin.

The Secret History is not just a murder mystery or a psychological thriller—it’s a novel about the allure of beauty and knowledge, and the dark paths they can lead us down. Tartt’s prose is lush and hypnotic, making even the bleakest moments feel poetic. You may be drawn in by the dark academia esthetic, the philosophical undertones, or the brilliance of Tartt’s storytelling. If you love immersive stories, morally complex characters, and books that make you think long after you’ve turned the last page, I think The Secret History is a must-read. 

Discussion day for The Secret History is scheduled for Tuesday, March 25, 2025 at 7:00 pm Eastern time, so mark your calendars. We'll ask questions on our blogs that day and then host the always fun, educational, and entertaining Zoom discussion. I really hope you'll Read With Us (even if the book is filled with awful characters)!