The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
by Diane Setterfield
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Book Reviews of The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
Book Review: Atmospheric gothic novel with an intriguing premise, but the writing fails to meet its potential. Moderately recommended
Summary: 4 Stars
Vita Winter is the most famous English author of her time, but despite of the dozens of stories she has published, she has never told the single true story of her own life. Now, old and dying, she commissions amateur biographer Margaret Lea to record her story, and begins to tell of her past: the story of a gothic mansion, a pair of feral twins, a ghost, and a fire. Winter's tale is couched within Margret's own, and both stories are deep with secrets, unfolding like a traditional gothic novel. However, Setterfield's writing does not quite rise to meet her premise, and her ghost story is readable and intriguing but never quite engrossing--in the end, it falls a bit flat. Characterization is too simple, the trope of twins is stretched too thin, and Setterfield cannot convincingly write about "the best writer in the English language" when her own skills as a writer fall so far short of that ideal. The reading is enjoyable and the concept is quite clever, but on the whole the book is only somewhere just above average: capable, interesting, but never amazing. I recommend it only moderately.
For me, this novel's potential and weakness is typified (and without spoilers!) by Vita Winter: Setterfield intends her to be the best, the most famous English author of her time, but in Winter's storytelling and book excerpts she is a mimicry of true talent, passable or else exaggerated but never truly great. The Thirteenth Tale has an intriguing premise: the secret past of a brilliant author, the secret past of our recalcitrant narrator, a crumbling gothic mansion, crazed women, wild twins, a ghost, a governess, a garden, a secret language, endless libraries... There is certainly enough there to make a dark and mysterious gothic novel to rival Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, or Rebecca, and that seems to be the author's intent. This concept and the plot are also enough to keep the reader attentive and interested through the length of the book, full of pleasant twists and turns, hints and secrets.
But for all of this potential, the novel does not quite rise to meet it. The Thirteenth Tale is nothing like Jane Eyre. There are little details, such as repetition in the storytelling or abrupt and unnecessary changes in tense, and there are bigger problems: Setterfield stretches her concepts too thin, in particular the bond between twins, until these once interesting ideas begin to feel overweighted and exaggerated. Margaret's narration also lacks a certain spark since the reader has problems identifying with her back story and her internal commentary tends towards childish or melodramatic. Setterfield's storytelling lacks real mystery and tension and at the end, after all of the secrets have been revealed, they seem in retrospect to be a little contrived and not quite worth the effort it took to get to them.
Make no mistake: The Thirteenth Tale is by no means bad. The premise is wonderful, the plot twists pleasantly and contains ever more secrets to reveal, and the storytelling, although not great, is good enough. The book kept me interested and involved, and so I feel comfortable recommending it. However, I only recommend it moderately, because the novel is little more than a polite homage to the sort of gothic novel that it aims to be. I appreciate the literary references and the author's, and charaters's, love of books, but in the end I would much rather go to and recommend the source. This book is a love story to books such as Jane Eyre, but Jane Eyre (and soforth) is the thing itself, with the same haunted atmosphere and secretive plot, but with skillful storytelling as well. This book isn't bad, but I would much rather recommend those ones.
Book Review: The Thirteenth Tale- a more than pleasant surprise
Summary: 5 Stars
When I enter into a bookstore, searching for a good book to read, I always head straight towards one section of the store: Fantasy and Science Fiction. The rest of the store fades away as I enter into the realms of dragons and wizards, space ships and aliens, and magic and time travel. It is very rare that I will ever even consider branching out, browsing through the other hundreds of books, and choosing something from another genre. In fact, I can probably count the number of non-science fiction/fantasy books that I have read on my fingers. When I bought The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, I thought that it was another story of magic, knights, and medieval kings. You can imagine my surprise in finding not a fantasy work, but instead a mystery-filled story of love, betrayal, family, honor, and "living ghosts". Even though it caught me off guard, it was a more than pleasant surprise, for it is most definitely one of the best works of fiction to ever have graced the "New Arrivals" shelves.
Diane Setterfield weaves together a magnificent tapestry that not only enraptures the reader in such a way to make him/her feel an actual need to turn page after page, but it also stretches his/her mind, unearthing questions that are not easily answered and whose answers cause even more hard-hitting questions to arise. The story focuses on two heroine-like characters. The first is Margaret Lea, the narrator and an amateur biographer who loves the world she enters upon opening up a book much more than the world she herself lives in. Her past, the story she has kept to herself since childhood, has left her with a feeling of incompleteness and the need to be whole again. The second character is world-renowned writer, Vida Winter, who has charged Margaret with the some-what difficult but long sought-after task of writing her biography. Miss Winter has spent her entire literary life composing not only story after story for her books, but also, when asked about her past, composing story after concocted story for reporters. The difference now, though, is that she is dying. With no way to tell how long she has before her part in the epic tale that is life is over, she employs Miss Lea with the hopes that, when the time is right, the world would learn of her past and how she came to be the way she was.
Why, though, after all those years of lying to reporters, would Vida Winter change her mind? The answer is found in a solitary inquiry posed by a boy many years back in her past: "Tell me the truth." Just as this imploration haunts the thoughts of our dying writer, it also begins to haunt the mind of Margaret, and the more she learns of this recluse's past, the more she hungers for the truth in its entirety. As the pair race against time and death to answer the unsolved mysteries of each others' lives, the truth is, in fact, revealed, and the stories are finally told. No one is prepared for the whole truth, though, and even the reader will be taken off guard when everything is brought out into the open.
I invite you to take a journey with Margaret through the dark, foggy past of Vida Winter. Learn why she became the secluded writer, brimming with stories of wonder. Learn about the ghosts that haunted her childhood. Walk the paths of mystery with both the aged author and biography-writing bookworm as they seek the answers of their pasts and search for wholeness in their future. Help unearth the ghosts of the long-ago and the skeletons in their closets. And, above all, learn how a mere footnote to the grand narrative can change the entire story.
Book Review: good thriller (gathers momentum from okay to exciting) with an inspired twist and a satisfying finish
Summary: 3 Stars
The backbone of this story is Vida Winter, the best-selling, captivating, masterful novelist of her generation, telling the secret story of her life to her chosen biographer, a reclusive bibliophile and occasional biographer Margaret Lea. The principal challenge for an author with writing a book in which a masterful (captivating, eloquent, powerful) storyteller tells her story is that you expect the story within the story to be, well, masterful. And when it isn't, you're disappointed. (It's kind of like the old Tom Hanks-Sally Field movie Punchline where Hanks plays an excellent stand-up comic, but the stand-up comedy in the film isn't that funny.)
This novel starts out that way. The storytelling isn't masterful, and Ms Winter - as she tells her story - displays the annoying habit of describing all sorts of feelings and exchanges that she would have no way of knowing about. She describes the dialogues and sentiments of members of her household that took place before she was born or when she was just a baby (without providing a plausible way for her to have learned of them). Maybe other stories make this mistake, but it stands out here, perhaps because Ms Winter is telling her story TO A BIOGRAPHER who realistically would not unquestioningly accept this kind of speculation. At other times, when other characters are telling their stories, the author takes explicit pains to explain why the narrative seems smoother or more omniscient than it should. Those explicit cases (sometimes a little over-explained) make Ms Winter's inappropriate omniscience stand out even more.
Although this is no The Shadow of the Wind [1], the plot picks up with twists and turns and red herrings, and finally the author adds a clever plot twist worthy of the film The Sixth Sense, a twist that allows the reader to turn back and re-interpret the entire story. Crafting a credible twist of that nature is no small feat, and Setterfield does it well.
I also enjoyed the ending. The author clearly subscribes to the adage: Give the audience what it wants. She ties up the loose strings and lets us know what happens to all the key characters with a wink and a nudge to her audience, indicating that she knows she is stepping beyond the immediate scope of the story but that she also knows we're interested in the next step of the characters' stories.
Well done. Not perfect, but well done.
[Note on content: The book has a few non-explicit references to sexual violence (no descriptions).]
[1] I actually read the original Spanish version of The Shadow of the Wind, La Sombra Del Viento (by Carlos Ruiz Zafon), and adored it. I have heard many rave reviews of the English translation. By no means should you listen to the English audiobook, which I tried to listen to but couldn't for its over-the-top music and accents.
Book Review: Too many crazies, unlikeable characters, inconsistent setting
Summary: 2 Stars
(Spoiler alert-several plot points are revealed in this review.)
I kind of liked the first half, and was curious about Margaret and Vita, but then story started to drag at Dr. Maudsley's and supernanny Hester's scientific interference with twins, and rapidly went downhill from there.
The author hits us over the head with Jane Eyre references so often (19, I checked.), it's tiresome and insulting, yes, we get it, you're enraptured by and paying homage to Jane Eyre. But Diane Setterfield is no Charlotte Bronte. Setterfield's idea of romance leaves the reader cold.
Every relationship in the book is so warped and, well, just depressing - the older brother Charlie's incest of younger sister Isabelle; Isabelle coming on to the neighbor girl, Sybilla, at the picnic; Isabelle detachedly seeing Roland; Charlie raping first Sybilla and then all the neighborhood girls; and Adeline and Emmeline's way-beyond-sisterly obsession with each other. Despite hints, absolutely nothing develops with Aurelius and Margaret, and Dr. Chilton and Margaret oddly hitting it off at the end is apparently based on her dedication in recording Vita's story. That's love? The writer hasn't a clue. The closest she comes to intimacy is the platonic relationship between Mrs. Dunne and Mr. Digence, 15 years her junior, and Margaret's comfortable routine with her father. If she was writing a satire of a romance novel, I'd get it, but no, that's not where she was going with it.
The real Jane Eyre has her pride, self worth, wit, and personal growth set in a clearly defined era where basic freedoms are denied a woman. I found none of these themes in the 13th Tale. Really, the only part that really resembles Jane Eyre is a secret nut setting fires in an old English manor. The story's mostly current setting with modern conveniences such as light switches and cars leaves the reader guessing, where's their cell phones when it snows and the lines are down? When is it supposed to take place? It starts out current, but then you start to doubt it. Is she saying that in this time and place, the Charlies of the world can run around raping women with no consequence? In England, just one generation ago? Really?
There's too many mental cases. That's such a cheap device in a novel, it lets the author introduce any random act as part of a character, because, "hey, they're nuts, must be reasonable." Charlotte Bronte wisely limited herself to one lunatic in the attic.
Finally, it's just not believable. No twins I've ever met even slightly resemble these characters. She hasn't created a world that's consistent in itself. And how did abandoned, filthy, so-hidden-from-sight-she's-almost-a-ghost urchin Vita Winter learn to produce such popular, extraordinary books with zero education? When did she even learn to read? From who?
In the end, it's just an unpleasant, unlikable, forgettable read. I'm puzzled at how the author gained a following. I'm hazarding a guess that bookstores sold her to Stephanie Meyer's enormous fanbase, using the underlying inspiration of Jane Eyre as a tenuous connection between the bestselling author and Setterfield. Don't buy it.
Book Review: An Old-Fashioned Tale
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Thirteenth Tale" is Diane Setterfield's debut novel, much praised for its literary quality and the return to "good old-fashioned writing". I do believe in progress and, if I want good old-fashioned writing, I pick up a Hemingway or a Dickens. Be that as it may, Setterfield's novel is engaging and rather interesting, even if I do dislike a perpetual gloominess and generally chilly atmosphere in any novel.
Margaret is a bookworm who spends her life surrounded by her father's old and invaluable books. She is also a writer, finding obscure people and topics to write about. When she receives a letter from a famous writer, Vida Winter, Margaret is intrigued. Ms. Winter is a recluse and a most prolific English writer, having written fifty three books during her career. Though exceptionally prolific, Ms. Winter is aggressively private and stand-offish, to the chagrin of many a journalist who attempted to write her life story.
Ms. Winter surprised Margaret by offering her a commission of writing her official biography. Margaret at first declines, but gets involved in the excellent storytelling of Vida Winter, who takes Margaret on a journey of the life that led to Vida becoming Vida, starting with her grandparents. Appealing to Margaret's own private ghosts, Vida weaves her final story on her own terms - meaning no questions allowed. Margaret is introduced to a wealthy English family who slowly fell apart through the devious and violent behavior of Vida's relatives, behavior that led to actions well-hidden and almost forgotten. The story has it all: mysterious deaths, runaway children, mental problems, secret children, fires and seduction.
It took me a while to read the first part of the book (this also happened to me with "Atonement"), and I persistently fell asleep while trying to push through to a more interesting part. I remember the numerous cups of hot cocoa that Margaret had, as well as her process of sharpening specific pencils. As with "Atonement", I gave myself a pep-talk each time I picked the book back up. Half-way through the book, the story started to pick up.
Most people like a good mystery, and "The Thirteenth Tale" has all the makings of one. It is not about the realism of a story, but the way the story is told. I read the second part of the novel in one gulp, maybe because I started ignoring Margaret's cups of cocoa and maybe because she stopped feeling sorry for herself as much. I must admit that Vida Winter's story was irresistible and engaging, once it truly got going.
Setterfield seems to be a very promising author, though I would have to prepare myself for another of her books. While I understand that many readers love this style of writing, I am not one of them, and this is merely my opinion.
All in all, "The Thirteenth Tale" is a relatively good mystery novel, with a good plot that spans five generations in all. Setterfield did a good job connecting these generations through the realization of the dysfunctionality of Vida Winter's family. I found the novel too long and too gloomy, but its literary value is nonetheless undeniable. Recommended.