The Oakland Review Blog

From the editorial staff of the Oakland Review, specializing in book/poetry reviews, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

November 6, 2025

words, favorites, and the secret history

By Kaia Mueller

It’s ironic, the way life leads you to your favorites. They’re always fleeting. I claim a book as my favorite, only to fall in love with the next one, my mind shifting without a backward glance to the previous. My family called them “phases,” always wondering which book would take the title next. I fall in love with characters so quickly, immerse myself in words so longingly that each new work feels like the best. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt has remained my favorite since I read it over the summer. While that may not seem like a great deal of time, it’s longer than is typical for me, especially considering the books I’ve enjoyed since. Something about this book stuck. Since coming to Carnegie Mellon and repeating my major countless times, people always ask about my favorite book. I’ve got only one answer—The Secret History is the title I’ve recommended to every person who dared to ask. The first page of this novel is framed on my dorm wall: a reminder of the power of words. 

Tartt does something incredible with her words. She twists the morals of the reader until they vanish into thin air. She persuades them to accept the unjust, only to flip the narrative and hand them a mirror, forcing them to confront the very evils they once deemed necessary.

In the first section of the book, Tartt creates the context for a murder. She details the scene through the first-person narration of Richard Papen, one of the most fascinating morally-gray characters ever written:

“I watched it all happen,” Papen says, “quite calmly—without fear, without pity, without anything but a kind of stunned curiosity—so that the impression of the event is burned indelibly upon my optic nerves, but oddly absent from my heart.” 

As you read, you become convinced that the murder is somehow necessary. You sympathize with the characters who organized it, despite their less-than-honorable intentions. I used to catch myself falling for the heroes—the Percy Jacksons and Harry Potters—only to find that now, it’s Henry Winter who’s on the tip of my tongue in conversation, my favorite fictional character. 

The narrator, Papen, is among the characters whom the reader has grown to care for. And it is with a slow, silent horror, that you realize just how villainous he is. It’s easy to sympathize with villains when the story is told from their perspective. It’s much harder to do so when the repercussions play out before your eyes. In the second section of the book, Tartt outlines the consequences of the death: the people who weep over Bunny, the school community mourning him, the seriousness of their deed. The decision is called into question as they spiral over what they’ve done, and the reader is left reeling.

Perhaps other people don’t see it that way. After all, the book is fictional, and readers can root for whomever they’d like without guilt. Morally-gray characters have become more common in modern literature, but The Secret History stands out. It’s manipulative; throughout the story, you find yourself empathizing with characters who’ve done nothing to deserve your empathy. Tartt has shown what words can do when you know how to weaponize them. They can manipulate, and blind you to what’s right ahead. 

In modern times, people often forget the power of words. Our attention is consumed by the latest technology, new discoveries that promise to make life easier. Much like in The Secret History, we risk forgetting that words and ideas hold real power and consequence. For me, it’s personal: I want to be a writer. But it’s difficult in a world that doesn’t understand. I’m proud to select Creative Writing as my major, but the reactions I get when I disclose that information don’t reflect this. People ask what I’m studying. They give me the same response—STEM would be a better use of my time. But the ignorance of a society that has turned its back on literature won’t change my goals. The Secret History is a reminder: words remain, even when people don’t. They mean something. They stick.

When I inevitably send my sister this blog post, she’ll roll her eyes. After all, it was she who asked me to read the novel months ago, when I promised I would last winter. It took me until the summer to do so, and she holds it over my head whenever I mention it as my favorite. Like I said, it’s ironic, the way life leads you to your favorites. And how you’ll never know the impact it has on you until it does.

—

“‘We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?’ 

‘To live,’ said Camilla. ‘To live forever.’”