Secret History vs Little Friend

well that sounds exactly like my college experience so I'll probably like it.

That's so true! I first read it when I was in high school and remember thinking it was great, and then I picked it up again and couldn't even get all the way through it.

Just finished it for the second time (18ish and 34) - I think I appreciated it more this time because of the liberal arts college absurdity. It's like the first half of Kavalier & Clay or Rules of Attraction... or Buffy/Dawson's Creek. I love the melodrama of everything in the characters' lives being so weighty and Important, it's a feeling I sometimes I wish I could recapture as an adult. There's even a Flowers in the Attic angle!

As a mystery of sorts, the last 200 pages are quite good at ratcheting up the tension.

I have only read THE SECRET HISTORY. I think I had always looked forward to it. When I finally read it, I was rather disappointed. As Chuck Tatum said 12 years ago, it is way too long -- it's 600pp when it could be 250pp. And the other flaws mentioned are real also, I think.

But I would still quite like to read her other novels.

If you think that was too long I'm not sure how you'd deal with the 800 page shaggy dog story that is 'The Goldfinch'.

The entire plots of both The Secret History and The Goldfinch only hold up because the protagonists are exactly the same variety of stupid.

Would agree re: The Goldfinch, he has years to figure out how to get out of his rather trivial dilemma (I still enjoyed it, for all that). TSH though, give them a break they're just poor frightened (naive, overprivileged) college kids.

She's such a stupid writer, can't believe how seriously she's taken

haha, I finally read the Secret History and loved it, and then read the Goldfinch and loved that too. searched up this thread and have no recollection of my earlier question but I'm rather taken with the comparison I made having not read her yet. My assessment in the end: pretentious, yes; completely readable and engrossing? also yes.