The Whole Sick Crew 
Thomas Jones
- The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Greek tragedy contributed to the mise en scène of Donna Tartt’s first novel, The Secret History (1992). Four classics students, privileged even by the standards of the elite Vermont college they attend, conduct a bacchanal and, in their frenzy, kill a local farmer, tearing him apart in much the same manner that Pentheus is done away with in Euripides’ Bacchae. Their secret is discovered by two other classicists, both friends of theirs: Edmund ‘Bunny’ Corcoran responds with blackmail; Richard Papen, the narrator, agrees to help dispose of Bunny. It’s an improbable set-up, but Tartt manages it deftly enough for that not to matter.
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Thomas Jones is one of the London Review’s contributing editors.
Other articles by this contributor:
Rut after Rut after Rut · Denis Johnson’s Vietnam
Welly-Whanging · Alan Hollinghurst
This Is Not That Place · David Eggers escapes from Sudan
Diary · My Life as a Geek
Diary · The Last Days of eBay
Intimate Strangers · Thomas Jones reads A.L. Kennedy’s new novel
Whisky and Soda Man · J.G. Ballard
Forget the Dylai Lama · Bob Dylan
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