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Product Description: Sometimes, when you open the door to thepast, what you confront is your destiny. Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchantingstories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate livesfor herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about herextraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret forso long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her ownpainful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret ismesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautifuland 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. Amazon.com: 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 Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-06
A Great Read
I was looking for a good story and an easy summer vacation read. The Thirteenth Tale fits the bill. It's a page turner and a great Gothic story. The characters are rather shallow, but that's okay, because their only reason for existence is the story, and the story does not dissapoint. The writing is not extraordinary or particularily memorable (I have not written down any quotes), but it is solid and facilitates this original tale. Recommended. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-03
Fun read, disappointing ending...
A very fun read with colorful characters and mysterious plot - a great page turner for the first 90% of the book... and then I just felt as if the author grew tired of the mystery / suspense and just handed the ending to you on a fast food tray. I stayed up until one in the morning anxious and excited to finish the book and solve the mystery, but when I turned the last page I felt cheated. It just fell flat for me at the end. Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-30
disappointing
I don't respond with reviews very often but felt compelled.
I absolutely loved the first couple chapters. The writing was wonderful, with passages I liked so much I wrote them down. Then, much to my disappointment the story turned to the sordid and tawdry. Once again, I'm baffled as to why an author who can compose those first chapters feels the need to resort to such subjects. Wonderful writing paired with a wonderful story seems to be done so rarely. 'A Slight Trick of the Mind' by Mitch Cullin or 'The Historian' by E. Kostova are two very beautifully written books that told incredibly good stories. Even 'The Historian' which delved into the presence and history of Dracula did not strike the sordid tones that 'The Thirteenth Tale' did. 'Thirteenth Tale' had potential to be a such a good book but the story went down a dark and disturbing road road it realy didn't need to. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-28
"The soothing, rocking safety of a lie."
"The Thirteenth Tale" centers on the life of Vida Winter, a renowned writer who has fed journalists with fabrications of her roots. Nearing the end of her life, she commissions Margaret Lea, a bookish amateur biographer, to write her story, and vows to tell the truth this time. This story, we learn early on, is the thirteenth tale Vida has withheld from her book "Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation." The story Vida relates is one of extreme dysfunction within the Angelfield family that spans three generations. Prominent in her tale are the twins Emmeline and Adeline March, and the bizarre events that visited their lives and the lives of those around them.
A novel about a book lover's search for truths, this strange story is awash in gothic elements and abundant references to 19th-century gothic masters, most notably the two Brontes and Collins, as well as the more contemporary du Maurier. Any stranger and it would have had to reference Stoker. For someone like me who eschews romance, gothic or otherwise, and prefers the extremely dark fiction that deals with the more sensational subject of mental aberrations, "The Thirteenth Tale" faithfully delivers on its promises.
Having decided to stamp her first novel as gothic fiction, Ms. Setterfield goes at it with gusto, employing all the tried-and-true tropes of its genre. It has no pretensions to being grand literature. Rather, it's a genuine effort at old-fashioned storytelling, complete with "ghosts," a decrepit manor, certifiable lunatics and things that go bump in the night. It is archaic, anachronistic, archetypal, and downright entertaining. It didn't promise to be anymore than that. The writing is artistic, the plot is implausibly weird but oddly fascinating, and the characters are intriguing in their wretchedness. It lures with its beginning, mystifies with its middle, and satisfies with its end. Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-26
To tell you the truth..The Thirteenth Tale is terrific...
"The Thirteenth Tale" is a Gothic-style novel set in modern-day England and in the 1920s. It begins with the story of Margaret Lea, an eccentric and reclusive young woman who spends her days writing obscure biographies and helping her father manage his book shop. Ms. Lea has a number of demons she struggles with..primarily a mother who pays little attention to her and a preoccupation with a traumatic family secret she uncovered as a child.
One day, Ms. Lea receives a letter from Vida Winter, a famous writer who is looking for a biographer. Vida has had many biographers write for her in the past but she has never told "the truth" and, thus, nobody really knows who Vida Winter is. This time is different, however, because Vida Winter is terminally ill. This time, she has promised to tell the truth..
Ms. Lea agrees to the project and soon learns that Vida Winter's story is full of mystery, intrigue, scandal and ghosts. The book alternates between Ms. Lea's voice and Vida's voice and, as Vida recounts her life's story, Ms. Lea is able to come to terms with her own demons.
This is an extremely well-written book. The language is superb and full of rich detail without being tedious. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys novels in the female Gothic genre.
As a post-script..I listened to this on-tape and have no complaints save for the fact that the woman who narrated Margaret Lea's character had a voice that was a little grating at times. Though, I found that I was so absorbed in the story that I failed to notice it after awhile. |
