The Secret History

What if the brotherhood you romanticized was just a cult with a reading list.

It opens with the murder. The mystery isn't who, it's how you learn to like the killers.

Julian's rule: the only thing worse than death is being ordinary. The class took it literally.

The bacchanal in the woods, beauty as a license plate for madness.

Henry's glasses, his Latin, his calm arithmetic about death. The coldest scholar in Vermont.

Francis's farmhouse, the cigarettes, the Greek. Aestheticism with a body count.

Bunny's postcards from Rome, paid for by people plotting to kill him. The book's funniest horror.

Richard nearly died of a cold in winter and nobody noticed. Loneliness as a subplot, accurately.

We didn't escape because we never wanted to. The last line keeps recruiting.

Carried out of it: romanticize carefully. Some aesthetics come with shovels.