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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Sep 2006, 416 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2007, 432 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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A love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.
All children mythologize their birth...So
begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's
collection of stories, which are as famous for the
mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for
the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.
The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating
various outlandish life histories for herself -- all of
them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune
but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now
old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth
about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer
Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her
own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains
an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel
between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes
on the commission.
As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for
good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic
strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including
the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins
Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary
garden and a devastating fire.
Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling
but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She
demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront
the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming,
finally, transformed by the truth themselves.
The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to
reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a
return to that rich vein of storytelling that our
parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane
Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder,
move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit
you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your
everyday life.
The Letter
It was November. Although it was not yet late,
the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage. Father
had finished for the day, switched off the shop lights and
closed the shutters; but so I would not come home to darkness he
had left on the light over the stairs to the flat. Through the
glass in the door it cast a foolscap rectangle of paleness onto
the wet pavement, and it was while I was standing in that
rectangle, about to turn my key in the door, that I first saw
the letter. Another white rectangle, it was on the fifth step
from the bottom, where I couldn't miss it.
I closed the door and put the shop key in its
usual place behind Bailey's Advanced Principles of Geometry.
Poor Bailey. No one has wanted his fat gray book for thirty
years. Sometimes I wonder what he makes of his role as guardian
of the bookshop keys. I don't suppose it's the destiny he had in
mind for the ...
Setterfield's erudite first work of fiction has all the hallmarks of a classic gothic novel, including the creepy ruined house, long-kept secrets, a madwoman in the attic and a dabbling of ghosts, Set in present-day England it has drawn comparisons to novels by the likes of Daphne du Maurier, Wilkie Collins and Charlotte Bronte...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Definitions of a gothic novel abound but most sources agree that it is one in which supernatural horrors and an atmosphere of terror are pervasive, and where the action usually takes place in a dark, mysterious building, typically a castle built in the Gothic architectural style*.
Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) is considered the first gothic novel, but it was Ann Radcliffe who popularized the form with novels such asThe Mysteries of Udolpho. During the 19th century there was a Gothic revival in the world of architecture; and the world of literature saw a, perhaps, connected resurgence of Gothic literature, ranging from the "penny dreadfuls" to the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker, with a Gothic influence being seen in ...
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