Excellent… Donna Tartt has discovered not the usual collegiate mix of sex, drugs and rock and roll, but a heart of darkness as stony and chilling as any Greek tragedian ever plumbed… she keeps the pace fast and the tension taut… a thinking person’s thriller. (Newsday)
My thoughts (hastily scribbled on a postcard):
Perhaps more than a murder story and less than a novel. Certainly, all the Greek allusions are interesting - but mostly to someone who already knows them. James (my brother), I think, likes it because it contains so many of his hopes and fears, set against a college background with which he’s more or less familiar. But for my part, the first section of the book is too short, the second too long. What takes place in the second is really only a deepening of the characterisation, which had it occurred in the first section would have made the climax more startling. I should talk to James about it, I think.
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