A hungry public waited for her second book, or perhaps a sighting: they never came. At the same time, the contradictions between hype, success and privacy were already clear: as Bret Easton Ellis said, "You can't be Salinger and be represented by ICM."Īnd after that: nothing. She became one of the most mythologised novelists of modern times, weird and reclusive and very much a Writer. Tartt's persona fed this obsession: her name (glamorous), her size (pocket), her answerphone message (TS Eliot reading), her fascinating pronouncements ("My life is like Candide" or "I'm the exact same size as Lolita" ), her chaste aura of another era ("Je ne vais jamais me marier," she once said, winsomely). But it was gripping and clever and fantastically erudite, and people became a little obsessed. It was only a thriller, and you knew who did it from the first page. They remember who recommended it to them, and who they were going out with at the time, and how they held their breath on the bus in to work, finished chapters walking down the street. People remember where they were when they read The Secret History, Tartt's 1992 debut, mega-successful (multimillion sales, 23 languages, a combination of Dostoyevsky, Euripides, Easton Ellis and Waugh, according to the New York Times) novel. I don't mean the people who've met her, although they definitely do, vivid and glorious and possibly not true no, I mean readers.
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