The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

published	2007 by Washington Square Press
first published	2006
binding	Paperback
isbn	0743298039 (isbn13: 9780743298032)
pages	432
description	Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the gen...more [close] 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: <blockquote> "You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."</blockquote> <blockquote>She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."</blockquote> <blockquote>"I am a biographer, I work with facts."</blockquote> 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. Margaret has a story of her own: she was one of conjoined twins and her sister died so that Margaret could live. She feels an otherworldly aura sometimes or a yearning for a part of her that is forever missing. Vida's story involves two wild girls--feral twins (is she one of them?)--who would have been better off being suckled by wolves. Instead, their mother and uncle, involved in things too unsavory to contemplate, combine to neglect them woefully. There's also a governess, a Doctor, a kindly housekeeper, a gardener, and another presence--a very strange presence--which Margaret perceives as a ghost at first. Making obeisance to other great ghost stories, there is a deadly fire, a beautiful old house gone to ruin, and always that presence.... 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
date added	03-21-07 edit book

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Hev rated it:

02/02/08

Read in December, 2007

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield was, for a lack of a better word, an interesting book. Just when you think you have everything figured out and Mrs. Setterfield can not surprise you anymore, she pulls another surprise out of her hat. Which that was a surprise in itself. Rarely do I find a book that can leave me guessing and have to actually tell me what happens before I figure things out for myself. I never figure out that there was a cousin until Mrs. Setterfield inform me of such. That...more

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Kristina rated it:

(review of isbn 0743298020)

08/21/07

bookshelves: neo-victorian

Read in August, 2007

Sigh. I really, really wanted to like this book. I heard good things about it, and it has many elements I usually love in a novel: a Victorian sensibility, questions of identity and sisterhood (as well as siblinghood generally), meta-commentary on writing, and a plain, quiet, somewhat chilly protagonist who prefers books to people. The protagonist, Margaret, grew up in a bookstore and learned to read using 19th century novels, and there are clear parallels in the story to Jane Eyre, Wuthering He...more Sigh. I really, really wanted to like this book. I heard good things about it, and it has many elements I usually love in a novel: a Victorian sensibility, questions of identity and sisterhood (as well as siblinghood generally), meta-commentary on writing, and a plain, quiet, somewhat chilly protagonist who prefers books to people. The protagonist, Margaret, grew up in a bookstore and learned to read using 19th century novels, and there are clear parallels in the story to Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, and so on.

And yet, with all it had going for it, somehow it fell flat for me. Somehow it felt slight and, eventually, tedious at the same time. There were definitely many interesting moments, but for some reason, the "gothic" elements of the story never swept me up in the passion and scandal the way it would if the Brontes or Wilkie Collins wrote it. Obviously this is an unfair comparison since the Brontes and Collins are my favorite writers, but then again, if you're going to model your story on Jane Eyre (and indeed, there were parts that really beat you over the head with it, stating the obvious instead of allowing the reader to infer for herself), you should be up to the task, right? One of the problems, in my opinion, is that it seems Setterfield wanted a "Chinese box" construction ala Wuthering Heights, but whereas that novel drew me in and made me feel like I was personally sitting at Nelly's feet as she told me the story of Heathcliff and Cathy, somehow Setterfield's construction (in which the novelist Vida Winter tells Margaret her story, and does so using third person, for a reason revealed later in the novel) feels very distanced. Margaret has a personal obsession which is supposed to parallel Miss (the novel's term, not mine) Winter's, but this obsession, for me at least, had me wishing Margaret would just get over it already. Miss Winter's story stops adding much new information at a certain point, and later we are given the diaries of a minor character, which essentially only goes over information we already know. Yet despite this, the ending feels rushed, and the mysterious "thirteenth tale," which Margaret receives in writing toward the end, is only excerpted. One wishes A.S. Byatt had written this novel, as I suspect Setterfield may not have felt up to the task of writing "the thirteenth tale," which has a fascinating premise. Byatt, I am sure, would have written a gorgeous tale to end the book with.

That's the bottom line, I suppose: I just don't think Setterfield is that good a stylist. The story should have drawn me in but didn't, and I set it down to writing that simply wasn't as imaginative or lovely as it could have been. If I read that someone made "hot, sweet tea" ONE MORE TIME I was going to go crazy -- I like hot, sweet tea as much as the next Victorianist, but can't you find something else to describe, or a different way of doing it?

With all of the wonderful Victorian-style writing going on now from former academics like Sarah Waters and AS Byatt, it's too bad this book didn't measure up. I kept comparing it to the (in my opinion) wonderful The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which is also a first novel by a former academic. The Historian has faults -- it's a little repetitious in certain points, it's unwieldly, there are some logic issues -- but it is so true to its Victorian predecessor (Bram Stoker's Dracula) in feeling, and it completely sucks you in (pun intended). I have discovered a personal preference: I would rather have an overlong, unweildy, messy wonderful novel that completely absorbs me than a shorter, tidier, but slight novel that doesn't touch me emotionally. Wow, did I just write a review that's longer than the book I just read?...less

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Juushika rated it:

(review of isbn 0743298020)

04/29/08

bookshelves: borrowed

Read in April, 2008

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. H...more 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....less

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Jamie rated it:

03/19/08

Read in March, 2008

recommended to Jamie by: good reads, I think
recommends it for: so many people

Oh to be lost in a book. That's really the reason I read, the reason I read more often than I write and so on. I have a favorite memory: it is me, at thirteen or fourteen, lying on a bedsheet I carried from the laundry room and spread out in the field across the street from my childhood home. It was spring, nearly too cool to be comfortable, but the grass was dry and very green and filled with tiny little pastel flowers, which are decidedly not "real" snow drops, but that's what I'd...more Oh to be lost in a book. That's really the reason I read, the reason I read more often than I write and so on. I have a favorite memory: it is me, at thirteen or fourteen, lying on a bedsheet I carried from the laundry room and spread out in the field across the street from my childhood home. It was spring, nearly too cool to be comfortable, but the grass was dry and very green and filled with tiny little pastel flowers, which are decidedly not "real" snow drops, but that's what I'd called them since I was a child.
I'd had Daphne DuMauier's Rebecca on my shelves for about a year. I'd borrowed it from some Language Arts teacher who was critical of my typical reading choices, however furvent, and suggested I up the reading level a bit. The paper back was spider-webbed with age and the pages brown and flaking, but I did like the very narrow picture: lovely dark eyes framed by red hair: Rebecca. And so, at last, the book had ripened and I read it in the field until it grew too dark to see and I moved inside. I can still feel the flowers touch my arms as I turned the pages, feel the "crush" of my stomach as I decided I loved Mr. De Winter I though I could only get from easy visuals like movies. And so began my love affair with the Gothic novel.
Others would follow: Jane Eyre, re-read in an apartment in Paris during the great, dreary rains of late winter, wrapped in a quilt, drinking black tea, and, of course, as of late, The 13th Tale. Where to begin--I loved Margaret Lea, the timid, Jane Eyre-ish narrartor who leads a very exact little life above her bookshop: dinner and in bed to read by eight with cocoa and hot water bottle, her old gothic novels with their nicely wrapped up endings, and I loved the eccentric Miss Winter, in her Mistlewaith Mannor of a house on the moores with topiary gardens, cats and tapistries. The food listed in these novels, the soup and sandwiches denoting lunch as apposed to the steak and kidney pie for dinner, it all sounds better with served at a small table in a dark, cozy room in a mannor house with a high antique bed overstuffed with linens.
Granted, this was a gothic novel with a bit of an edge: like Rebecca's maybe/maybe not lesbian connotation, the Angelfield's have a knack for not only mental illness and general instability as well as seemingly profound agoraphobia, but they also like to "hurt" themselves and each other: physically. There was absolutely a plethora of rusty wires, kept needles removed from sewing kits, revolvers, pires and cans of petrol.
But, like Jane Erye, there were also ghosts to go with the madness and other lovely things, as well as asylums, (twins!), trains, hats, gloves and libraries. It's no wonder Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney cartoon...it too, fits this bill.
The book wasn't perfect, but how can anything be? I wasn't ready for it to be over, exactly, but begining to understand on my own, which is the sign of a worthwhile mystery. No mystery should be impossible to unravel--it's all about the story, the trail of the ribbon, as apposed to simply the unvailing. I loathe totally impractical silliness in mysteries. I much prefer a long lineage of a well oiled, detailed distraction. Very good book.
PS: there was a stone cottage, too. I do love that, too....less

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LSM rated it:

(review of isbn 0743298020)

09/13/07

"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"

This quote from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield sums up my experience with the book. It’s been a while since I’ve felt truly drawn in to a novel. Likely this is the result of m...more
"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"

This quote from The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield sums up my experience with the book. It’s been a while since I’ve felt truly drawn in to a novel. Likely this is the result of my recent tendency toward selecting less-than-literary books in an attempt to find some distraction without devoting much real focus to the reading. I’ll admit that it took me a bit to get hooked, but, a few chapters in, I found myself thinking about the novel and the developing plot at times when I was unable to be reading.

There is no reference to time in the setting of The Thirteenth Tale. From the context clues, I’d guess that it’s set in the 1970s. It’s a world where people still write letters and where if phone lines go down in a storm, country homes are cut off from contact with civilization. Manuscripts are written by hand. The feel of the book is reminiscent of Jane Eyre, a novel that itself is woven throughout the plot.

The story begins when Margaret Lea, a little-published biographer, is summoned by Vida Winter, famous novelist. Ms. Winter is finally ready to tell her true life story, rather than another of the many versions she’s given of her life over the years. As she does so, Margaret and the reader are drawn into the mystery that shrouds Ms. Winter. Through the stories she tells Margaret as well as the accounts of Margaret’s own investigations, we eventually learn the truth both about Ms Winter and the legendary Thirteenth Tale, a story that was left out of an early collection written by Ms. Winter. There are enough twists to keep the story interesting and unpredictable.

The book jacket describes The Thirteenth Tale by stating,

"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."

In reality, it’s that and much more. This book lead me to wonder about identity, love, and the meaning of family. I have a feeling these characters will indeed be in the fiber of my clothes for quite some time.

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Randall rated it:

(review of isbn 0743298020)

04/30/08

The thread of suspense is a very delicate one. Prolong the suspense too much and the reader loses interest before the reveal, the thread is broken. If you do not build up enough, the thread is not taut; the reader has nothing to cling to.
Regrettably, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is in the former category. A story within a story, Tale follows the history of Vida Winter, as told to Margaret Lea (who has demons of her own to battle). Winter is Britain’s most celebrated and reclusiv...more The thread of suspense is a very delicate one. Prolong the suspense too much and the reader loses interest before the reveal, the thread is broken. If you do not build up enough, the thread is not taut; the reader has nothing to cling to.
Regrettably, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is in the former category. A story within a story, Tale follows the history of Vida Winter, as told to Margaret Lea (who has demons of her own to battle). Winter is Britain’s most celebrated and reclusive author. She has never before shared the true story of her life to anyone, and (predictably) on her death bed, summons Lea to chronicle her life before she succumbs.
Lea is a lover of books, and when she is not sitting audience with celebrity authors in their decline, she works with her father in a book shop. It is when Lea talks about books that her character shines, more so than the sections dealing with her own ghosts.
Winter’s own story is very interesting, but suffers from the cage of the narrative. The story is interrupted by asides from Lea, which pull you right out of the story. Setterfield did this to create suspense, but it doesn’t work. Winter’s narrative also shifts from third (they) to second (we) to first (I) person narrative, which convolutes the story more, especially since Lea is always in first person. This comes across as a literary gimmick (the reason for the shift becomes apparent in the conclusion), and the result is lacking.
Added to this muddled mess are several sub plots: the aforementioned Lea has a secret, a lovable townsperson who may or may not have a familial connection to Ms. Winter, and the destruction of the family estate in which Winter grew up. All of these tie in at the end, but are not needed, as they shed little light on the characters themselves or the plot.
Right around page 300 or so, the diary of Ms. Winter’s old governess makes an appearance, which adds another layer of story. One layer too many, it turns out, as this is the point in which the thread of suspense snaps.
One bright light in the novel is the setting. Winter’s home and also the estate she grew up in are descried in rich detail. You can almost smell the gardens outside and feel the warmth of the hearth. One wishes Setterfield had done as good a job on the characters as she does on the locales.
The conclusion of the novel is not that surprising, in fact it’s very Deus Ex Machina, a little too neat and tidy. Winter literally finishes her story and dies. Setterfield may have been trying to emulate the maudlin and melodramatic feel of the classics she references so often throughout the tale, but the result is often forced and not very attractive.
It is difficult to work the love of books into a suspenseful story, but not impossible (As The Shadow of the Wind proves), Setterfield, however, is simply not up to the task.

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Wendi rated it:

(review of isbn 0743298020)

02/06/08

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Wendi by: Terry
recommends it for: Danielle, Tina, Sarah, Beth

EDIT: 2/6/2007:
I finished The Thirteenth Tale last night. A fantastic ending that is complete. There are several wonderful lines from this book, but the on that sticks out to me this morning is a line about how when a reader finishes a book she often thinks of the other characters and what happened to them. We usually find out what happens to the main characters but the side characters, the secondaries - what happens to them? And the author does not fail to fill in all the gaps.

Througho...more

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Jason rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

02/27/08

Read in February, 2008

first impressions:
so far i'm LOVING this book...
which is a fitting emotion for what seems to be a symbolic love letter to both books and the bookish...
this text is a sublime combination of fluid prose, wonderful imagery, and finely directed character development...the character of vida winter hasn't even been introduced yet and i know enough about her already to be hopelessly intrigued...
the passage that deals with the notion of story will always be with me; stories abhor silence and nee...more

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Zinta rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

04/21/08

Read in April, 2008

Instantly, I was transported. By story as well as by its telling. Any book lover will know within the first sentence or two, more times than not, and so I knew: treasure. In Diane Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale," the reader does not have to choose between intruiging storyline and strong writing. The book is built on both. It has the flavor of old classics, and the comparisons with the Bronte sisters and Daphne du Maurier fit well. Yet Setterfield also manages to achieve her own sig...more

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Jo Ann marked it as to-read (review of isbn 0743298020)

10/02/07

bookshelves: to-read

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 gi...more

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Maricar rated it:

02/05/08

bookshelves: suspense

after i finished with this novel, i found myself staring at the book itself with what i think was a bemused expression.

to clarify: i immensely enjoyed this--as they called it--"story-within-a-story". true, the number of characters increased almost in regular intervals as vida winter laid down the history of the angelfields. but they were introductions that never muddled the story, and definitely it was quite easy to keep track of them and the sometimes prevalent, though, more ofte...more

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Jennifer rated it:

05/12/08

bookshelves: trt-reviews

Reviewed by K. Osborn Sullivan for TeensReadToo.com

This is a fascinating and rich Gothic mystery about a young Englishwoman who is hired to write the biography of a famous, dying author. The author has always kept her past a secret from her millions of fans, and the biographer is about to find out why. The young woman moves into the old author's home in the remote English countryside, and spends the ensuing weeks compiling details of the author's bizarre and disturbing early years. As the dy...more

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Barb rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

02/26/08

Read in February, 2008

This book was recommended by two friends, but I didn't think I would really like it. Not the kind of book I usually read - Nora Roberts, Jeffrey Deaver, Dan Brown, etc. I usually don't read English authors, as I've found them a little too slow and descriptive. But, I really liked this book. It took a few chapters to get with the style and cadence of the speech, but I was hooked. It was descriptive without being flowery and boring. An elderly, dying author hires a bookshopkeeper's daughter t...more

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Jesse rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

02/06/08

Read in January, 2008
recommends it for: Fans of Bronte and Austen

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Rach rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

11/28/07

Read in November, 2007

This has finally come out in paperback. This is that one that got an £800,000 advance and is meant to be the best book since sliced bread. To be honest I don't hold out a lot of hope....

On P. 138
I take it back. I have been sucked in straight away. Can barely put it down! Whiich is apt seeing as amonst other things it is the tale of books and their words sucking you in. It is also the tale of a dying writer and her reluctant biography, lost twins and the ghosts of the past. Like The...more

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Catie rated it: (review of isbn 0743298020)

12/04/07

Read in December, 2007

I picked this up on a whim ... we'll see how it goes.

Update: Meh.

Setterfield wrote an interesting story (though this took her three years ... really?). There was enough intrigue to keep me turning the pages and even though I'm weaker of stomach than some the incenst and the violence of this story wasn't TOO unsettling.

I think I'm unsatistified with this story because of the heroine. I really, really wanted to connect with her; I felt like we had so much in common at the offset. But ...more

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Michelle</