The Thirteenth Tale [Import] [Paperback]

Diane Setterfield (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Orion; Export Ed edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752875744
• ISBN-13: 978-0752875743
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (931 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,008,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Diane Setterfield is a former academic, specializing in twentieth-century French literature. She lives in Yorkshire, England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

308 of 319 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Very Enjoyable Read, December 9, 2006

By 

Patrick Harrington (At Sea) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thirteenth Tale (Hardcover)

I almost never review books on Amazon, but I just finished reading "The Thirteenth Tale" and logged onto Amazon to see if Diane Setterfield had written any other books and in the process browsed the existing reviews. I found that I could agree with neither the positive nor the negative reviews. A majority of the positive reviews simply fawn over the book without explaining why it is so good. Many of the reviews are filled with overworked hyperbole. Many of the negative reviews struck me as so vitriolic that I wonder if the reviewer had forgotten their meds before starting the review. And so, I decided to write a review. I'm not going to tell you whether it is a good or a bad book, I'm going to tell you if I liked it or not and why.

I enjoyed the book for the following reasons:

1. The plot interested me (see book description if you don't already know the plot).

2. The writing is excellent. Richly descriptive without being so wordy that I felt like skimming paragraphs.

3. I found the characters interesting, believable and well-developed.

4. The pacing of the story was just how I like it in a book of this genre. Slightly meandering with a steady rise and fall of tempo. This gives me plenty of exciting reading, but also allows me places to stop reading when I need to go to bed or do something else.

Is this book great literature? Hell, I don't know and don't care. I enjoyed reading it and that's what reading is all about for me.

512 of 537 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Debut, September 14, 2006

By 

Mark Wakely (Lombard, Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Thirteenth Tale (Hardcover)

When a first novel is immediately (and enthusiastically) compared to the works of such literary luminaries as the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, a large dose of skepticism is in order. I read this book with a jaundiced eye, expecting to eventually uncover at least one unconvincing character, a plot twist that failed to surprise, or a passage less than vivid, unworthy of the masters.

I did not.

Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale carries the reader along like a turbulent river, with unexpected eddies and undertows you can't escape. The characters are absolutely true to the worlds of Dickens and Austen, but they're originals, not derivatives. They grieve and you do, they rejoice and you do, they die and you do- almost. The whole atmosphere of the book is powerful and sweeping, in the manner of Henry James or even Joseph Conrad. (Well, minus all those ships, of course.) If I had to pick one story that gave the same overall effect, I'd pick The Turn of the Screw, since the ghost element in Setterfield's book is equally shocking and unique, although James's classic novella lacks the grand span and scope of The Thirteenth Tale. Then again, Setterfield's characters could just as easily find a home in Dickens' dangerous London squalor or in the halls of a Bronte mansion, the air thick with secrets and heavy with troubled specters anxious to make themselves known.

Intriguing, daring and even downright heart-pounding at times, The Thirteenth Tale might well give you nightmares at the end, but they'll be the best- and most original- nightmares you've ever had.

-Mark Wakely, author of An Audience for Einstein

603 of 636 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Do you intend to tell me the truth?", September 12, 2006

By 

Tom S. "filmfan3" (New York City) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Thirteenth Tale (Hardcover)

Vida Winter, England's most famous and reclusive writer, is nearing the end, and before she goes she wants her amazing life story to be recorded for posterity. For this, she engages a lonely young biographer, Margaret Lea, who has a few secrets of her own. When these two forceful women meet, the stage is set for an ever-mounting series of shocking surprises.

I've always been a fan of the Gothic style of romantic mystery, and some of my favorite authors are the Brontės, Daphne du Maurier, Mary Stewart, and Robert Goddard. If you share my love of windswept moors, bleak houses and strange families, you're in for a real treat. THE THIRTEENTH TALE is a masterful, deliberately old-fashioned story of secrets, ghosts, sexual obsession, murder, madness--you name it, and it's here.

This is a beautiful book. I'm going to give copies to a few friends, and I plan to read it again. The only other books I've actually read twice are GREAT EXPECTATIONS, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and REBECCA. What else can I say? Enjoy.