The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
by Diane Setterfield
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Book Summary Information
Author: Diane SetterfieldBrand: Simon & Schuster Audio
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-09
ISBN: 0743298039
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Washington Square Press
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Book Reviews of The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
Book Review: In Vida Veritas
Summary: 3 Stars
While author Diane Setterfield pays ample tribute to the Gothic novel in her debut, `The Thirteenth Tale," she fails to fully engage her readers. Its not as if the story isn't interesting--it is. The tale of Angelfield and its strange family are fraught with all manner of things macabre that is the stuff of which the Gothic genre thrives. However, perhaps due to the outer body narration of Ms. Margaret Lea who as a third party conduit has little to do psychologically with the emotional drama contained within the walls of the old estate, readers find that the filter of truth that Ms Lea supposedly brings to the table further distances them from participating fully in the conundrum around which "The Thirteenth Tale" is designed.
Take for instance the narrator in "Rebecca," the classic modern Gothic by the prolific and magical Daphne Du Maurier (check out this biography about her:Daphne du Maurier, Haunted Heiress (Personal Takes) ). Published in 1938, "Rebecca" still manages to thrill and titillate its audience with its psychologically driven characters and atmospheric setting--the almost-paradise of Manderley where one too many snakes have slithered in amongst the magnificent gardens and drawing rooms to ruin this 20th century Eden. The so wisely un-named narrator with her flyaway hair, unsophisticated manner of dressing and lack of self-esteem and identity becomes a veritable Alice down the rabbit hole. She has much on the line, one discovers as her story unfolds: her marriage, her safety, her life, her husband . . . the list goes on. Her marked insecurity and her personal stake tantalize us as readers--we cannot wait to uncover the mystery of "Rebecca" as we race towards its last page and even then we are tantalized further by the image of the horizon, reddened as if by blood and the glint of ashes that blew in `with the salt wind from the sea.' Throughout the narrative we feel the narrator's insecurity; each and every affront to her, we also experience as blows to our reader egos.
Not so with Setterfield's narrator, Ms. Lea. Hired for her skill as a biographer by the renowned and much loved Vida Winter -an author with more than fifty novels under her belt, the bookish Margaret journeys to her home on the Bronte sisters' fabled moors of Yorkshire to capture on paper the elderly woman's personal history. Now Margaret has a few secrets of her own and when Miss Winter begins her tale, she is compelled by the similarities between them--driven, so to speak to discern the truth from the layers of storytelling that Winter has so adeptly applied to shelter herself from sorrow. That's all well and good, but it wasn't enough of a connect for me as Lea's story just serves as an outer frame for Winter's more intriguing tale of love amidst dysfunction and betrayal.
Setterfield uses the well-worn technique of Margaret's narration to introduce Vida Winter's telling of her own history. As a guest in Winter's home, Ms Lea travels from her bedroom to the library where she listens and commits to memory the elderly author's installments. We are made to understand that she has little life or love of her own, other than the reading that she does for pleasure and in conjunction with her role as her father's assistant in her family's bookshop. Nonetheless, she does have needs that are expressed often throughout her exposure to Winter. However, rather than pull me into the story more fully, they served as a buffer that disallowed me from fully engaging in the strange tale of Winter's life. From this reviewer's perspective, I believe the story would have been better told from the vantage point of another character, perhaps Ms. Winter herself as grand dame of the British contemporary novel looking back at her life where her characters were all fully fleshed out, but her most major player--herself--lacks substance and definition. This would mean that Margaret's story would wait and be told in another book with another hook.
"The Thirteenth Tale" leaves no loose ends; the mystery is finely defined. Setterfield's observations about language, the oneness of twins and the loneliness of life even when publicly acclaimed are particularly poignant. To more fully observe that for which the elderly woman searched her entire life, I would have liked to see the character Vida Winter as a middle-aged woman, not only as a child and octogenarian. Setterfield's depiction of sibling love and fealty reminds me of Kate Morton's portrayal of sisters and cousins in "The House at Riverton: A Novel" and "The Forgotten Garden: A Novel", albeit these were both better reads for this genre. Nevertheless, throughout Margaret's narrative, I found myself slightly bored by the typically Gothic scene: the decaying manor house so like Miss Havisham's Satis House (Great Expectations (Penguin Classics), the fire from Thornfield Manor (Jane Eyre (Vintage Classics)), the intrusive rain so plentiful and destructive in Wuthering Heights (Barnes & Noble Classics) and by the lack of a dark and mysterious hero to beat faster the heart of the rather bland Ms. Lea. (Sorry, the doctor of the second to last chapter does not do it for me--I'd fashion a character like Raoul from Nine Coaches Waiting by the esteemed Mary Stewart.) Thankfully, Setterfield does treat us to a denouement not unlike that in Jane Eyre for which the near future of all characters small and large are accounted. However her postscriptum with its attempt at the supernatural leads us back to the bowels of the past rather than bring our Ms Lea into a shinier happier future like all good Gothics should.
Bottom line: "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield just didn't connect for me. Reminiscent in feel to the 2009 film "Angel" adapted from the novel by Elizabeth Taylor, the plot involves a story within a story with an outrageous cast of characters that are difficult to like. Modeling her elderly authoress on the likes of a Daphne Du Maurier or a Patricia Highsmith (check out the thirteen tales in The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder), Setterfield would have been better off telling her tale from her elderly author's vantage point to fully take advantage psychological nuance and fierce emotional desires. Recommended only if there is no other hot Gothic to read.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Summary of The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
Sometimes, when you open the door to the past, what you confront is your destiny.Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts."
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan
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