An Author a Day for Thirty Days: Day 6

I confess it. I am late to the Donna Tartt party.  I think we may have mentioned her in passing on the blog,
but I'm pretty certain that we've never dedicated a entire post to her. I'm sure that Gianna will read through all of our previous posts to make sure I'm playing by the rules. It's about time she starts following this blog.

Donna Tartt

I've read two Donna Tartt novels, and the word is that she'll have a new book hitting shelves this fall. Tartt's second book, The Little Friend, was actually the one I read first, when it came out about ten years ago. Here's what I remember: creepy, and snakes. I was never scared of snakes when I was a kid, but then they became the subject of some of my recurring nightmares and I can't even read about them without horrible dreams. If your primal fears don't mind the reptiles, though, and you enjoy plucky child protagonists and a fair amount of Southern Gothic, you'll enjoy The Little Friend.

Tartt's better known book, though, is The Secret History, and many of my five friends list it as a favorite novels set in schools. Tough. I'm not starting over. I was sitting on a plane at 6:20 this morning, I have an altitude-related headache, and I am grumpy. You're stuck with Donna Tartt. (You're so lucky that you're stuck with Donna Tartt.) I love books that take place on school campuses because everything is amplified in these environments. They are insular worlds full of competition, stress, and every real world issue you could imagine, but often clouded by friendships, rivalries, and secrecy. I was an RA in college and I'm still trying to forget some of the things I saw.  Anyway, Richard is the California guy who transfers to the elite east coast liberal arts college. Richard falls in love with a group of Greek students and their professor, but the tight knit group fractures. Alcohol, sex, betrayal, murder. Sweet!
book. Crap. I just remembered that I wrote about this book in a blog post about

Read Donna Tartt.