A murder mystery in reverse- A Secret History by Donna Tartt

I've just finished reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I read it in order to respond to a competition brief from Penguin which was to deisgn a new cover for the book, to bring it up to date. The current cover is certainly in need of a re-design. It's very boring and, added to by the fact that the word History is in big letters on the front, looks very much like a dull history book.

The book is in fact a murder drama, or what has been described as a murder mystery in reverse. It's not a particularly exciting one, and rather slow moving, but the characters are intiguing and unusual and there are some scenes of violence ad drugs to spice things up a bit. Being a murder mystery in reverse is quite interesting because you already know who is murdered but you don't know why or how. And at the beginning of the book you can't work out if it's one of the main characters and if so why they would do it. Once I had found this out though, i got a litle bored and hence I've only just finished the book. I also found it hard to get inspiration for designing the cover of the book. I was interested by the  drug themes running through the book and the growing mass of  lies and secrets that the group had to keep within them. I thought about using hair on the cover to represent this as hair can be used to find out if someone has been taking drugs but paranoid people trying to cover this up sometimes resort to shaving it off. I made me think of the extent the group went to with their lying and trying to cover up their crime. I did some drawings for this but it looked too decorative and not dark enough for the book.

I looked at the winners of the cover deisgn competition and this one that came joint third, made the best cover I think. The imagery reminds me alot of the sort of images the book created. The boy covereing his face with the deer's head, respresenting the mystery and lies and also the deer that they remembered from the woods on the night of the crime, and also the woods in the background which features quite a lot in the book.

It's not a book i'd say you must read, as i wouldn't say its particularly exciting and it's quite hard to read and a bit slow but I don't feel it was a total waste of my time. I was perhaps a little disctracted by trying so hard to notice themes and strong images to enjoy it.