A Reading Recommendation for Donna Tartt

 Dear Ms Tartt,

I recently read your book The Secret History. I wasn't impressed, a fact which I recorded here a few posts ago, together with just a few of the reasons I thought it was so bad. 

Here's a thing. If you want to write a 'campus' novel and tell a story of hurt and betrayal and indeed produce 'a fine study of remorse', why don't you read Naomi Wood's The Hiding Game which is a masterclass in how to do it?

Her setting, both time - the 1930s - and place - The Bauhaus Art School, set up a feeling of dread and anticipation  on their own which I suppose may be partly what gave Ms Wood the space to do what you didn't do;  people the novel with complex characters with both good and bad qualities, and totally relatable problems and dilemmas. There again  you took plenty of space for your book (it is after all, a great deal longer than The Hiding Game) so perhaps the fact that your book was full of nasty and totally non-credible and creepy people isn't the result of anything other than a lack of imagination or empathy or effort on the part of the author. Who knows? 

Anyway, maybe you would find The Hiding Game a worthwhile way to spend some of your time. 

Sincerely

Anne

For anyone else - I wholeheartedly recommend this book which is a moving exploration of guilt, remorse and how people live with their own past failings. I knew very little about The Bauhaus beyond its name and broke off reading the novel to find out more about it, so compelling does Wood make it seem. At the end I almost cried. Since only two writers have ever been able to actually make me cry, the fact that I almost cried at this is very high praise.