The Secret History by Donna Tartt mainly takes place at the elite Hampden College, a liberal arts university in Vermont. The novel follows Richard Papen as he leaves his poor California home and joins a tight-knit exclusive group of students studying Classics at the school taught solely by Professor Julian Morrow. Richard Papen as the outsider within the group of rich and privileged college students tries his best to fit in, including creating an elaborate backstory for himself, but he soon discovers that not everything is as it seems with the others.
The Secret History is a long novel written with academic prose, emblematic of the “dark academia” aesthetic that is rampant on the internet. The novel both criticizes and lavishes in the exclusivity and the classism present throughout academic settings, satirizing the out-of-touch nature and distance between the working man and university student. The group of Classics students are mindlessly pretentious, and their study of reading classic pieces has an inherent barrier to entry, the books written in Latin only adding to their air of prestige. Richard, who initially starts off as a representative of the working class, eventually gets accepted into the group and transforms, but soon thereafter realizes the pitfalls of this secret society. I would recommend this novel to anyone interested in literature fiction, mysteries, or dark Academica as a whole, but be warned this book is a project to read.