This is one of my favorite books. And, after I write the plot of it, I'll seem like a horrible person. Keep in mind that lots of books are incredibly well written and deal with unappealing subject matter!
Richard Papen is out of place in California, and flees to Vermont to study at Hampden College. He immediately falls in with a small, elite Classics group: Charles and Camilla (nearly ethereal twins), Henry (a bit fastidious and remarkably intelligent), Francis (eccentric), and Bunny (clueless and well-meaning). The six of them bond while translating Latin and Greek prose, which instills in Henry an obsession with having an ancient Bacchanal. Richard and Bunny are both left out of the proceedings. Bunny discovers, quite on his own, that Henry, Francis and the twins accidentally killed a local farmer during the Bacchanal, and proceeds to mentally torture and extort money from them in order to keep quiet. When he begins to act unpredictably, though, the remaining cast has to decide what they're willing to go down for.
Ok, that's the gist. The novel, though, is written with a firm footing in reality; how else can we believe that a Bacchanalia took place? These are the things of myth, yet Tartt brings it into the modern world. The writing follows a Greek tragedy, pulling in the Greek literature the students are studying. It's an involving piece of fiction, with excellent character description and intriguing plot developments. I realize that nothing I'm saying is intriguing in and of itself, but this book is so good! My copy has been thumbed through about five or six times; you should at least try it once.
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