The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield
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Book Reviews of The Thirteenth Tale
Book Review: A story that is hard to put down
Summary: 5 Stars
This was an audio book I couldn't put down! When it first began, I thought it was going to be a story that would drag out and be dull. Was I wrong! It was a slow start for me but once the author got into the main story and past the initial background information, it just kept getting better and better.
Vida Winter is an author who is sought for the mystery of her missing thirteenth tale. She has kept her past life a secret from every biographer and newspaper reporter that has ever interviewed her. Oh, she would give them a story but it was jus that, a story. Each and every one was different. No one knew the truth of her past life. She is now dying and wants to tell the true story for future generations.
Margaret Lea is the daughter of a book store owner and has a secret in her own past. She receives a letter from Vida asking her to write her biography. Margaret goes to Vida's home and, at first, is unwilling to write the story. But Vida has a way with words and persuades Margaret to change her mind. Vida has only one rule, no jumping ahead or asking questions. A very strange but Margaret agrees and takes up residence at Vida's home.
Each day, the two spend a few hours together as Vida spins her story of the Angelfield family. What a story it is! A ghost, a governess and a devastating fire is enough to keep anyone's attention. But there is even more as the story is also about twins. Margaret discovers that this is something that Vida's biography and her own life have in common.
As the story progresses, Margaret begins to believe there is more than she is hearing and her curiosity sets in. She writes for help from a private investigator to find out if certain things Vida is telling her are really true. The answer is that the story is true and Margaret takes a holiday to visit the Angelfield home. There she finds the burned out remains of the family home, Aurelius Love and a woman and her two children. What does all this have to do with the story? Just wait, it all comes together so well.
Diane Setterfield writes a story that is a story within a story within a story and if you don't pay attention, you miss the clues she leaves you along the way. She writes in a clear and easy to follow manner and holds your attention so intently that you can't wait for the next twist or turn. She even had me guessing what would happen next and some times I was even right!
The two readers, Jill Tanner as Vida Winter and Bianca Amato as Margaret Lea are wonderful to listen to and give the story which is set in England a true English feeling with their respective accents. Each makes their respective character come to life. Ms. Tanner gives Vida's character the voice of an elderly person who is gravely ill and makes it believable. Ms. Amato gives Margaret's character the incredulous sound of someone who is not quite sure she is being told the truth and of one who is determined to know it.
Without a doubt, this is a tale that I would read again. I hope Ms. Setterfield plans on writing more as I would be sure to read any she writes.
Book Review: To Be Chewed and Digested
Summary: 5 Stars
Even if you haven't read Jane Eyre, you'll still be able to follow the twisting plot of this book. But if you have read Jane Eyre, and especially if you love Jane Eyre, then you'll appreciate the homage this book is to the gothic gem. A governess, a tragic fire, the moors, a lunatic secretly housed in a scary old house - many elements of Bronte's classic picked up, rearranged, and deposited back into this spellbinding book.
The premise of the story is this: internationally revered (yet notoriously reclusive) author Vida Winter has contacted quiet bookseller and amateur biographer Margaret Lea to write the scoop of the century - a "truthful" telling of Ms. Winter's life story. Margaret has her own reasons for wanting to refuse - namely, that she herself is pretty reclusive - but upon reading one of Ms. Winter's books for the first time in her life, Margaret is entranced by the woman's power over words. What kind of life could feed such talent? And why hasn't Ms. Winter shared the truth of it before?
Margaret accepts the invitation and joins Ms. Winter at her grand, dark estate on the moors. At this point in the novel, with the dictation of Winter's story to Margaret, Setterfield begins to weave together the landscapes of the past and the present - the stichings of Ms. Winter's life and Margaret's own knowledge of love, loss, and the concept of "truth." I appreciated the smooth transitions between the two worlds - many authors have been less successful with this approach. But there was nothing jarring or contrived about how the perspectives and stories switched back and forth; it was seemless and offered much in terms of a deeper revelation into the story.
Three plot devices did distract me a bit from the beauty of the writing and the quality of the story. First and second: ghost and twin. Both of these themes are intrinsic to the understanding of this book, but I did feel that Setterfield laid it on a bit thick (just my opinion). A little less could have gone a lot further with me. And third: the unsettling relationship between a brother in the sister was, well, unsettling. I made my peace with that by recognizing there was nothing descriptive or graphic whatsoever in describing their relationship - it was all inference and innuendo. Still, not my favorite part of the story.
This book is drama and mystery and suspense. Darkness and whispers. Labyrinthine garden and hallways. It is also, ultimately, about family and yearning for love. And, I think, about second chances. The writing is beautiful and offers a lovely ode to booklovers of all shapes and sizes. Setterfield's Margaret asks rhetorically, "Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes - characters even - caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you." I would answer to Margaret, yes, I know exactly how that feels. This time thanks to your creator.
Book Review: I'd Rather Be Reading Jane Eyre!
Summary: 3 Stars
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield was among one of the most highly touted books of 2006. A major bookstore went so far as to call it "a distinguished debut novel of the year." Written in the tradition of other Gothic books like those by the Bronte sisters, Daphne DuMaurier and even Victoria Holt, It had been some time since I wandered on the moors of England or sat in a comfortable but foreboding English manor home talking with a friend. And what reader could resist an old fashioned story complete with secrets and a ghost. With this in mind I really looked forward to this book I even went so far as to suggest it to my book group based on other readers praises before I even read it. Unfortunately along the way something went wrong for me.
Vida Winter, an elderly reclusive English author for 60 years, realizes her life is coming to an end. Although many have tried to interview her and find out more about her past, she has never revealed the history of her life or what happened to the thirteenth tale. Now Ms. Winter invites a shy and retiring woman to her home to hear the full story. Upon receiving the invitation, Margaret Lea, the daughter of an antiquarian bookseller reads a book by Ms. Winter Vida titled The Thirteen Tales. Ending the book with only 12 tales, Margaret also wonders whatever happened to the last tale. Although reluctant at first, Margaret does meet with Ms. Winter. And as Ms. Winter begins to tell Margaret her story there is one stipulation. That while Ms Winter tells Margaret her story and the missing thirteenth tale, she will ask no questions.
What ensues is a Gothic story filled with interesting characters (it would be safe to say that today we would call the family highly dysfunctional) abounding loyalties, well kept secrets and a ghost. And as the novel progresses we learn that Vida Winter and Margaret Lea learn they are bound to each other in an unexpected way.
I'm not sure why I didn't love this book. I certainly expected to since at one time I couldn't get enough of Gothic novels or mysteries. While the use of words described everything beautifully and I feel as though I was in the room listening to Ms, Winter,I found the book to be very slow moving, perhaps to set the scene better, but for me it took on a plodding feeling as I read. I also found I didn't really like the characters all that much although I tried to. And finally I felt there were too many unanswered questions for me at the end.
I will be curious to hear what my book group thought about this title but me, I'd rather be reading Jane Eyre or Rebecca, especially for the first time.
PS - I wrote this book review yesterday in the morning. The afternoon found me browsing at the library when I came across an audio of The Thirteen Tales. Apparently I haven't quite finished with this book and now will begin listening to the discs hoping that I enjoy this venue better than the book. Traditionally I have never enjoyed audios as much as a book, but hope spring eternal here.
Book Review: A real gothic page-turner
Summary: 5 Stars
A true gothic novel in the style of the Bronte sisters, Setterfield's debut features a narrator who lives mostly in her imagination, through the books she voraciously devours. Margaret Lea writes occasional short biographies of obscure, long-dead people and helps her father run a quiet, dusty antiquarian bookshop, where most of their time is spent reading. Until the events of this novel, she never read anything more recent than the 19th century.
"The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait."
Then, Vida Winter, Britain's most beloved author, a woman with a stubbornly mysterious past, proposes that Margaret hear her story and write her biography. Vida is dying and her loose relationship with "the truth" has been on her mind. All her life she has used stories to deflect interviewers who'd come armed with some small fact. "A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth."
But now the truth is gnawing at her, clamoring to be set free. She has decided on Margaret after reading a biographical piece she wrote on a pair of brothers: "Because you know about siblings."
Not just siblings, but twins. Margaret was a conjoined twin - when they were separated her twin died, her mother never fully recovered, and Margaret has felt haunted by the loss all her life. When Vida tells her the story begins with twins and ends with a disastrous fire, Margaret is hooked, only insisting on a few facts she can verify before starting.
The story arises from the dying woman's vivid tales of generations of Angelfields, each more eccentric and vicious than the one before, and Margaret's research through old records and her explorations of the burned ruins of Angelfield, the family manse. There Margaret meets a man who bodily haunts the ruin, called by his unknown past. He was a foundling, left at a nearby cottage the night of the fire, a baby smelling of smoke.
And Vida tells of wild, untamable twins, neglected by their crazed mother and her cruel brother, cared for by a dwindling staff, which is finally whittled down to a devoted housekeeper and a watchful gardener. Outsiders - a doctor and a plain, competent governess - interfere in the twins' lives, nearly destroying them in trying to save them. People die, disappear, are dragged off to lunatic asylums.
And it all works. Setterfield is a strong, vibrant writer who calls upon all the romance of the gothic style and weaves an elaborate, dazzling tapestry for the reader. This is a book to sink into and be swept up in, a page-turner of mysteries, hauntings, revelations and secrets, storms and deaths and, finally, truth. Already I can't wait for Setterfield's next.
-- Portsmouth Herald
Book Review: The girl in the mist
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the finest novels I've read since college, and that I haven't read anything this good since college has nearly embarrassed me into going back.
Ms. Setterfield writes with the sure hand of a seasoned novelist. Writing in the first person, according to many editors, is difficult because you have to maintain that voice throughout the entire book. It cannot wax or wane, and more so than in a third person narrative, the character at all times - because we are in his/her head at every juncture - needs to be true to his/her core identity. Harder yet is to tell a story with two first person narrators, as the reason given above is considerably magnified.
Yet Ms. Setterfield demonstrates remarkable facility in handling both narrators and they are true to their core identities from beginning to end. There is Ms. Winter, one of the most successful and respected writers of her time, and the overall narrator, Margaret Lea, her commissioned biographer.
Without question, the more enticing of the two is Vida Winter's narrative as told to Margaret Lea, mostly because of its content (it is the main story, after all, so it should be more enticing...) but also because of her fierce desire for the true story of her life to be told. When we meet Ms. Winter, we realize that she was named aptly, for she is a cold and distant woman. And yet when Margaret decides that she is in no mood to be manipulated by Ms. Winter, as Ms. Winter has beguiled many reporters seeking the story of her life, Ms. Winter's coldness drops as if it is nothing more than a façade, and the desperate honesty of her plea causes Margaret to reconsider.
Margaret reconsiders with on one condition: that Ms. Winter provide her with three facts that no one knows about her, and are verifiable, and that will ultimately prove that Ms. Winter is being honest with her. One cannot help but develop a sense of respect for Margaret that may not have existed until then.
What unfolds is a remarkable story worthy of Ms. Setterfield's admitted inspirations (well, Margaret's inspirations, but it is Ms. Setterfield's story) - the Bronte sisters, George Eliot (Marian Evans), and others. The story also pays homage to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, in the sense that the aforementioned story is easily the finest ghost story ever written. One doesn't get a sense that Ms. Setterfield has any ambition to out-write any of these authors, but rather to humbly submit something that may be spoken of in their company.
I think she succeeded.
What is remarkable to me is that in a literary world littered with Dan Brown's and Mitch Albom's, such a literate, well written story (indeed, within the first paragraph I knew I was in trustworthy hands) could not only appear on the New York Times bestseller list, but lay claim to the top spot in its very first week.