For a long time, I treated unfinished books as a personal shortcoming. If I didn’t connect, I assumed the problem was attention, patience, or effort. That I hadn’t tried hard enough. But reading is not a moral exercise. It’s a relationship, and like most relationships, it’s shaped by timing, mood, expectation, and capacity.
It is a peculiar kind of fame: literary, elusive, enduring. And it begs the question—how has Tartt managed to become one of the most recognisable cult authors of our time by doing, ostensibly, so little?
Log on to BookTok and you’ll find Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo passed around like holy scripture.
Over on Bookstagram, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow or Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library are often perched artfully next to a flat white and some autumnal leaves. If you’re deep into literary fiction, chances are someone has handed you Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, or the ever-expanding crop of novels compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
It’s all candlelit study sessions, whispered debates about Greek tragedy, and the intoxicating smell of old money and old books. But what happens when we look past the velvet curtains? Is dark academia simply an aesthetic, or does it say something sharper about literature, class, and longing?
They’re not always my favourites in the traditional sense. But they know something about me, or I know something about them. That's the power of rereading.
Led by Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz, this trio of young writers provided a fresh, glossy glimpse of urban excess. But beneath the designer clothing and drug-fuelled nights, there was something more: a generational manifesto hidden behind chic minimalism.
It’s a campus novel, a murder mystery, a character study, and a cult classic all in one — and it’s particularly resonant for a generation obsessed with aesthetics, identity, and the allure of darkness.
So what makes The Secret History so enduring?
I’ve always been fascinated by this sub-literary genre, from what makes it work to why it continues to captivate readers and how it manages to be both intensely specific and universally resonant.
The best campus novels transport us to a world of intellectual ambition, youthful recklessness, and, often, profound disillusionment. They capture a moment in life where identity, relationships, and ambition collide.
But what exactly makes a great campus novel, and which books best define the ever-growing genre?
Do you need a killer opening line for your novel? Or is there an alternative way to draw readers in right from the start?
I'm slightly obsessed by the opening lines of novels, and for me, the opening line isn’t merely about crafting a flashy hook; it’s about setting the tone, sparking curiosity, and providing readers with a reason to keep turning the pages. A brilliant first sentence generates intrigue and anticipation, drawing the audience into your story before they even realise it.
I’m a massive fan of Donna Tartt, particularly (like many people) The Secret History, which I wrote about recently. It got me thinking—whatever happened to Donna Tartt?
It has been more than a decade since Tartt published her last novel, The Goldfinch (2013), which won the Pulitzer Prize and cemented her status as one of the most celebrated literary figures of our time. But since then? Silence.
Tartt has never been a prolific writer. She famously takes a decade (or more) between books, crafting intricate, deeply atmospheric novels that become instant modern classics. The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002) were each published with long gaps in between, setting a pattern of meticulous, slow-burn literary output. But now, more than ten years have passed since The Goldfinch, and there’s no official word on what comes next.
So, where is Donna Tartt? And why is the wait for her next novel taking even longer this time?