

The book is both a literary novel and a classic murder mystery, blending classical scholarship with a sense of ‘whodunnit?’ suspense. This book is based at Bennington College in Vermont where, as has been mentioned above, Tartt herself studied. Let us take a closer look at two of Tartt’s most famous works, ‘The Secret History’ and ‘The Goldfinch’. All of Tartt’s novels have been highly praised.

It centers around a young female protagonist whose brother is killed by hanging, and it traces her anxiety as she tries to come to terms with this and other things that happen to her along the way. ‘The Little Friend’ is a dark story about children who come into contact with the sinister aspects of the adult world in a way that continues to impact on them for the rest of their lives. Tartt’s first short story was ‘Tam O’Shanter’, published in 1993 in The New Yorker.

She has also published several non fiction articles in magazines, and a number of short stories. This was followed by ‘The Little Friend’ and ‘The Goldfinch’. Her first novel was ‘The Secret History’, which was published in 1992. Tartt is often regarded as something of a mysterious author, and not least because each of her first three novels were separated by time spans of around a decade.ĭonna Tartt has written numerous novels, most of which were published by Alfred A. She has claimed that her key literary influences include George Orwell and JD Salinger. Tartt won several prestigious awards for her writing, including the Pulitzer Prize. She later progressed to writing longer novels, many of which quickly became bestsellers. Tartt began writing short stories at an early age – her writing caught the attention of her professors at university from the very beginning. Whilst at university, she studied alongside several other American novelists, including Bret Easton Ellis. Later, Tartt went on to study classics and English literature at the University of Mississippi (having enrolled there in 1981). She was born in Greenwood in Mississippi in 1953 and she studied at Bennington College in Vermont.
