Where do you get your ideas for fiction?Įverywhere - from travel, from history, from gossip, from true crime, from stories in magazines at the dentist’s office, from childhood memories, from rumors and songs, from dreams (I mean this literally - I keep a dream journal, and dreams often make their way into my books). I think the assumption is that novelists get some giant idea all in one piece, and then all they have to do is sit down and write it. The people who connect with 'The Secret History' are passionate about it - it’s not a book for everyone but the responses to it, for better or worse, are seldom lukewarm. I’m thrilled with how the book continues to resonate with readers - I couldn’t have wished for anything better.

Questions from readers Did you imagine, back then, the impact the book would have? On one level, the tasks that have fallen to me since publishing the book have almost zero to do with the factors that that enabled me to write the book in the first place, but I’ve had a life filled with travel (the book has been published in 40 languages) and it’s been more than wonderful to have a following and the freedom to write what I want. How has your life changed since the book was published?

If the book keeps someone company during a difficult time in their lives, I’m happy. I’ve had some moving letters from people in prison. I’ve also loved hearing from young people who have been inspired to study Classics after reading the book. For me, writing a novel doesn’t feel like an address to an audience so much as a direct interaction with one other person - the solitary person who pulls the book off a shelf and reads it, whoever that happens to be - so I’m less concerned with the broader impact of the book than with how it reverberates in the lives of individual readers. Questions from Jenna What has the response of the book over the past 30 years meant to you?ĭonna Tartt: I love that it’s meant something to people - that readers have not only enjoyed wandering around in the imaginal space of the book but have kept returning to it. Below, Tartt answers a few of them, sourced from Read With Jenna members and Jenna herself.

After 30 years, readers like Jenna have racked up quite a few questions.

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