TL;DR: A tale within a tale, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is a rich story about ghosts, family, and forgiving your past
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Margaret Lea is shocked to discover that England’s greatest writer, Vida Winters, who never tells any truths about her past, has written her to ask Margaret to write her biography. What follows is a tale about forgiveness, acceptance, and how to lay the ghosts of her past to rest.
I loved this book. It hooked me in from the first few pages and I prayed the author wouldn’t let me down. She didn’t. She crafted two tales, one of Margaret and her search for life and meaning, and another of the twisted tragic past of Vida Winters. It has a gothic center, full of the truth concealed in letters, diaries, and stories. Because I loved it, down to the last word, I give it my highest marks of five stars.
The Plot
Margaret Lea works in a bookshop owned by her father. It’s not the usual bookshop, but has stories of old collectors editions. Her life is routine, but she enjoys it nonetheless. When Vida Winters, England’s greatest writer, sends her a letter asking Margaret to write her biography, Margaret can’t refuse.
Once Margaret mets Vida and begins to learn the truth of her life that Vida has hidden from the world, she can’t refuse to write the tale. But she also investigates on her own while tackling the demons from her past. In the end, it’s a tale about ghosts, twins, love and loss as both women face the past they can no longer ignore.
What I liked & liked less
I wasn’t sure what to expect from this story, as it was recommended in a thread for Fantasy Bingo. It is not a fantasy story, although there are elements of ghosts. Within the first chapter, I already loved it. By the last page, I wanted to read it again to see what I missed.
Margaret is flawed, impatient, curious, and damaged. Her past is a constant ache, but by the end of the book, she finds some peace with it. She loves books, prefers them to people, so perhaps that’s why I liked her. There were definitely moments where I wanted to smack her, because she pushed too far and too hard, but isn’t that what makes a great character?
Vida Winters is a storyteller at heart and the story she tells is tragic, dark, and gothic. Throughout, you seem glimmers of who she is and what she’s suffered. By the end, you understand why she did what she did and why she hid herself away from the public. She couldn’t face her past until she could no longer outrun it. I found her as fascinating as her tale.
The prose is gorgeous, the atmosphere for of both the past and the present gloomy and filled with shadows. I loved the tale within tale as we flipped between Vida’s story and Margaret’s search for the truth. Some of Vida’s tale was darker than I like to read and I might have squirmed a few times, but it held me enthralled.
There isn’t much not to like about this book. I found the ending satisfactory, but also felt the author tied it up into a neat happy ever after, which, while nice, left me a little dissatisfied. I wanted it to be wrapped up in the same heaviness in which it began, but then I also was happy to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
To Sum Up (Too Late!)
If you like gothic literature and environments dripping with emotion, dark tales and exploration of the heart, you’ll like this book. If you can smell an old book without holding one in your hand and love a good mystery, you’ll also like this book. I didn’t quite figure out the mystery, although I had some ideas about it (I guessed wrong). And everything the author did fit neatly within the story. I will have to reread this tale and see what I missed because when it ended, I was sad and also full of thoughts about what I read. For all that and more, I give this book 5 stars and it will find a place on my shelves soon.
About the Author
Diane Setterfield is a British author. Her bestselling novel, The Thirteenth Tale (2006) was published in 38 countries worldwide and has sold more than three million copies. It was number one in the New York Times hardback fiction list for three weeks and is enjoyed as much for being ‘a love letter to reading’ as for its mystery and style. Her second novel, Bellman & Black (2013 is a genre-defying tale of rooks and Victorian retail. January 2019 sees the publication of her new title, Once Upon a River, which has been called ‘bewitching’ and ‘enchanting’.
Born in Englefield, Berkshire in 1964, Diane spent most of her childhood in the nearby village of Theale. After schooldays at Theale Green, Diane studied French Literature at the University of Bristol. Her PhD was on autobiographical structures in André Gide’s early fiction. She taught English at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie and the Ecole nationale supérieure de Chimie, both in Mulhouse, France, and later lectured in French at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She left academia in the late 1990s to pursue writing.
Diane lives in Oxford, in the UK. When not writing she reads widely, and when not actually reading she is usually talking or thinking about reading. She is, she says, ‘a reader first, a writer second.’
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