How does an author create a story lacking a single likeable character that keeps you reading frantically to the last page? I can't answer that, but I can tell you that Tartt has done it. Richard Papen leaves his dingy California home for a small, elite college in Vermont. There he becomes enmeshed with a small clique who, the reader gathers, are the friends he's been waiting for all his life - brilliant, eccentric, fabulously wealthy, and entirely exclusive. Papen manages to hide his working-class background and so-so education to penetrate their circle, being accepted into their unique program of study: Greek and Latin classical literature and philosophy, all under the tutelage of Dr. Julian last-name-forgotten, a mysterious figure who looks like Dumbledore but may very well be...well, never mind. These very precious, special young people quote Aristotle like the rest of us toss off Seinfeld references and create their own moral universe, with disastrous results. Tartt sustains Hitchcock-like tension throughout. Just plain amazing writing.
I remember that a bunch of people I was working with in 1995 or so recommended this. I read it and really liked it. "The Little Friend" was really good too. Burt's "The Hole," from 2002 or so, seemed to be a nice, creepy riff on Tartt's semi-classic.
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