The Secret History by Donna Tartt is on the 223rd place on The Greatest Books of All Time site – hundreds of books from that list are reviewed on my blog, including The Goldfinch (ranked 767th on the same site), and here is the plug for the best gig there: https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is on the 223rd place on The Greatest Books of All Time site – hundreds of books from that list are reviewed on my blog, including The Goldfinch (ranked 767th on the same site), and here is the plug for the best gig there: https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html

 

 

8 out of 10

 

The average rating for The Secret History is 4.16 on Goodreads, where an astonishing 912,231 ratings, adding another one to the total,  and 106,182 reviews have been accumulated, ergo we have to conclude that this is just as popular as the other bestseller, The Goldfinch https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-goldfinch-by-donna-tartt-winner-of.html by the same Donna Tartt

 

-          And all this despite, or is it because it has 559 pages, not a couple of hours entertainment, if also not a daunting task

 

Indeed, let us be ‘merit finders, not fault finders’, just like Tal Ben Shahar recommends https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-pursuit-of-perfect-by-tal-ben-shahar.html and say that there is a lot to like in this mystery novel, which starts abruptly with ‘Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation…’

 

Many quotes are memorable ‘to me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject…psychology is only another word for what the ancients called fate.' And then Donna Tartt picks her own favorite lines from other thinkers - While to a certain extent Milton is right – the mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell and so forth’ albeit she, or her main character, appear to disagree here

‘My name is Richard Papen. I am twenty-eight years old and I had never seen New England or Hampden College until I was nineteen. I am a Californian by birth and also, I have recently discovered, by nature. The last is something I admit only now, after the fact. Not that it matters…’ this is the narrator and main character introducing himself

 

A mystery novel is more enchanting if it is sophisticated, it includes academia, as it does here, perhaps takes on Shakespeare, or we have protagonists who study Greek, the crème de la crème -the best example would be The Daughter of Time https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-daughter-of-time-by-josephine-fey.html

 

This was voted by the British Crime Writers Association as The Best Mystery Novel ever, and you have inside a captivating, mesmerizing investigation into…Richard III – you know ‘this son of York, all the clouds into the deep bosom of the ocean buried’ – who was not the vicious murderer created by Shakespeare…

Richard joins a group of five students, all learning with the Classics Professor Julian Morrow, so they will be five now, if not for long, remember, we know from the start that ‘Bunny had been dead’, and this is getting to be one of those very good plots - if rather, or too long for the attention span of this reader, but wait…

 

-          This is not A La Recherche du Temps Perdu https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/le-temps-retrouve-by-marcel-proust.html

 

In short, these young people get involved in a murder, and then they have to cover their tracks, by all means, I am thinking now of the attacks of the administration of Orange Woland on universities, as they have insulted allies, thought of invading Canada, Greenland, Panama, Gaza, while embracing Putin and other tyrants…they will soon have ceremonies to torture and kill their enemies, why not, if they can…I am using hyperbole here, but only for this stage in the process, looking at how they are doing so far, it is always possible

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/02/is-this-unique-could-it-make-money.html  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

 

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