It is, as the inside book jacket of my battered paperback proclaims, “the thinking person’s thriller.” It is the urtext of what I now consider to be my favorite genre - namely, wealthy students at elite colleges exploring sex and murder through classic literature. The Secret History is my personal Platonic ideal of what a novel should be, and since I first read it back in the heady days of junior high, I have spent my entire reading life attempting to find similar versions of it. Whenever someone asks me to recommend a book, I always start with the same question: Have you read The Secret History? A lot of people have - the book has been translated into 24 languages and sold over 5 million copies since 1992 - but for those lucky souls who have not yet been initiated into the cult of Donna Tartt, there’s never a bad time to get started. In the Cut’s recurring books column, Shelf Improvement, we delve deep into our bookshelves to find recommendations that never go out of style.
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