Customer Reviews

The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

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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.

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

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.

I picked this book up on the advice of a good reading friend. It started out a tad slowly for my taste and I put it down several times, but by the time I had read about five chapters, I was totally engrossed in the twisting, turning, compelling subterfuge of Vida Winters' storytelling and the tale of her life as a twin with a crazy mother & *uncle*. The twins aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, either, but I don't want to give away too much. . . I hate it when a review gives away the plot!!

The plot was excellent and well-paced. The ending tied up all loose ends and left me with the contented feeling of having read a fine Victorian mystery novel. I highly recommend this book if you haven't read a "different" sort of mystery in a while. It's a fabulous tale, well told. What more could any reader want?

It is a dark and stormy night as I write this. Or, to be more accurate, a dark and stormy morning. The weather reflects the exquisite melancholy that has settled itself upon me at the completion of The Thirteenth Tale. Diane Setterfield's debut novel is one of those all-too-rare stories that gets under your skin, that grabs hold of your imagination with both hands and won't let go.

I have cherised the reading of this book over the last week. All other books were set aside. When I wasn't reading The Thirteenth Tale, I was thinking about it, remembering it. I looked forward to those stolen moments when I might be able to read but a few pages as much as I did those hours that I could devote to the tale. I hung on every word and savored The Thirteenth Tale as one would a well-prepared meal. And now it has ended and, contrary to my normal habits I am not anxious to pick up the next story. I am not yet ready to move on.

To put it plainly, The Thirteenth Tale was bound to fail. It had to overcome the weight of considerable expectations. It seemed that everywhere I turned prior to its release someone or some thing was inducing me to buy this book. Comparisons to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca only served to heighten those expectations. And as I stood in the bookstore holding this beautiful volume in my hands (raised letter dust jacket with an image to make a book lover swoon, serrated pages that smelled of new paper and fresh ink, gold embossed designs on the spine of the book itself) my expectations were at a fever pitch.

As I read those first pages I was nervous. Diane Setterfield was obviously attempting to speak with the voice of her gothic ancestors a century or more gone. A few of the initial sentences worried me. This style of writing seems always to be balanced on the edge of a precipice...one sentence fragment too many will tip it over that edge. I needn't have been concerned. Within a few pages it was apparent that Setterfield was a skilled performer. And really, if you think about it, she had an ace up her sleeve. Her protagonist, Margaret Lea, is a book lover. Sentences like:

"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce you skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic."

and

"I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book."

could be mantras for those of us who have shared our love of books of late. With the kindred spirit of the bibliophile I was willing and anxious to follow Margaret on her adventure. And what an adventure it was.

As I indicated at the beginning I will not spoil any part of the story for you. Simply put, The Thirteenth Tale is a grand novel in the gothic tradition. If you have read the book jacket you know that the story features a ghost, a grand old house, and family secrets. The novel allows us to witness the act of one person telling their story to another and in those moments Diane Setterfield's writing transports you to the very side of this storyteller, making you feel like the story is being told you and you alone. A delicious air of suspense pervades this story in both its revelation of the nature of evil and in its resolution of the various plot threads that are skillfully woven together by Setterfield.

The back inside flap of the book jacket promises that Setterfield will, "in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life". She keeps her promise.

UK publisher paid this first time author about 1.5 million advance for this book. Then the US paid her another million or so. This is a book you do not want to end because of the pure reading pleasure in brings. I will not go into plot summary as that can be found in other reviews. I will say that Settefield's voice is spot on for this book. The prose will make you stop at times and marvel at some of the insights she conveys. You will be hooked after the first 15-20 pages a pure reading pleasure feast. After you finish the book you will envy the readers who have yet to discover the book because you want to experience reading for the first time again. THIS SHOULD BE A HUGE SELLER. The sale of Movie rights can't be far behind this release.

I may be presumptious here. I have only, so far read half way of THE THIRTEENTH TALE by Diane Setterfield. Yet I had to write this review. It is one of the best books I have read for a long, long, long time. One of the books I will come back to, and re-read over again. It is for those readers who like nothing better than to immerse themselves in a story, to find themselves taken by the words of the author into another world. It is a story about an aged author, Vida Winters, her younger biographist, Margaret Lea. Both have one thing in common, their love and associtation with books. And maybe, with a secret they both share.

Vida Winter is the author of over sixty novels. Her first book, a collection of short stories, is entitled, THE THIRTEENTH TALE. Yet, in this first edition, there was only twelve stories ever published. So what happened then, to the thirteenth? Down the years, Vida has been asked this constantly. To each she has given a different answer. She has invented a story. Because she is a born story teller. Has never revealed the truth of THE THIRTEENTH TALE. Until she learns of a young biograhpist named, Margaret Lea, who is summoned to the shadowy house of Vida Winters, on her request to at last reveal the truth.

The style of writing is always fluent. In no way does it try and copy that of some of the so called, classical novelists. Yet, in a way, it creates an atmoshpere that can be compared with such novels, as Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw. The old mansion to which Margaret is summoned, is itself dark and shadowy. Draped in it's own secret. And perhaps it's own ghost? Yet when Vida begins to tell her own life story, to Margaret, her words and images of those characters she has once known and is again, bringing once more to life, transports the reader away from the flickering lamps of that old house. And into the lives of those self same characters. It is like a house of stories. Each contained under the roof of that old house. Yet each room holding a different tale, all of it's own. But, are any of them, really THE THIRTEENTH TALE? Or is Margaret herself that ,unknowingly, is linked with this tale?

because once you start this one, you're in for the long haul. the story and the atmosphere pull you in and refuse to let go until you've finished it. and even after you turn the final page, the cold English fog still clings to your mind. you'll find that the lush colors and dark shadows have burned themselves into your memory.

this book is an instant classic.

The heroine of Diane Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale" is a lonely and bookish woman named Margaret Lea, who is commissioned to write the biography of a world-famous author, Vida Winter. Until now, Winter has never revealed the details of her background to anyone, and Margaret cannot imagine why this celebrity would entrust such an important task to her. As the novel unfolds, the reader learns that Margaret and Vida have much in common. Both women adore literature and, in addition, they are harboring painful family secrets.

"The Thirteenth Tale" is an example of a superior writing style triumphing over a gnarled and melodramatic plot. The prose is gorgeously expressive, with so many brilliant and lively descriptive passages that it is difficult to single out just one. Nonetheless, here is an example of Setterfield at her best: "There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin...." The writing is never less than spellbinding, and Setterfield's lush and leisurely prose is a throwback to the classic novels of centuries past.

There is also much to admire in the large cast of Dickensian characters. Vida Winter is a grande dame who knows her own worth, speaks plainly, and brooks no nonsense from anyone. Hester Barrow is an ambitious and arrogant governess who tries to take two out-of-control children in hand and fails miserably. The intellectually inclined Margaret has always used reading to escape from reality. Working with Vida impels Margaret to finally deal with the sorrow that has crippled her for years.

In spite of its strentghs, "The Thirteenth Tale" is not an unmitigated success. It is too convoluted and densely packed, with its shadowy births and deaths, a mutilating fire deliberately set, a sadistic man whose twisted deeds lead to tragedy, and at long last, a measure of solace for the book's protagonist. This four-hundred-page work could have used a bit of careful trimming. The last quarter is bogged down with one too many startling revelations that are more dizzying than enthralling. Still, it is entertaining to spend time with Diane Setterfield, a talented author who has great respect for the power of myth and the beauty of language.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield was among one of the most highly touted books of 2006. A major bookstore went so far as to call it "a distinguished debut novel of the year." Written in the tradition of other Gothic books like those by the Bronte sisters, Daphne DuMaurier and even Victoria Holt, It had been some time since I wandered on the moors of England or sat in a comfortable but foreboding English manor home talking with a friend. And what reader could resist an old fashioned story complete with secrets and a ghost. With this in mind I really looked forward to this book I even went so far as to suggest it to my book group based on other readers praises before I even read it. Unfortunately along the way something went wrong for me.

Vida Winter, an elderly reclusive English author for 60 years, realizes her life is coming to an end. Although many have tried to interview her and find out more about her past, she has never revealed the history of her life or what happened to the thirteenth tale. Now Ms. Winter invites a shy and retiring woman to her home to hear the full story. Upon receiving the invitation, Margaret Lea, the daughter of an antiquarian bookseller reads a book by Ms. Winter Vida titled The Thirteen Tales. Ending the book with only 12 tales, Margaret also wonders whatever happened to the last tale. Although reluctant at first, Margaret does meet with Ms. Winter. And as Ms. Winter begins to tell Margaret her story there is one stipulation. That while Ms Winter tells Margaret her story and the missing thirteenth tale, she will ask no questions.

What ensues is a Gothic story filled with interesting characters (it would be safe to say that today we would call the family highly dysfunctional) abounding loyalties, well kept secrets and a ghost. And as the novel progresses we learn that Vida Winter and Margaret Lea learn they are bound to each other in an unexpected way.

I'm not sure why I didn't love this book. I certainly expected to since at one time I couldn't get enough of Gothic novels or mysteries. While the use of words described everything beautifully and I feel as though I was in the room listening to Ms, Winter,I found the book to be very slow moving, perhaps to set the scene better, but for me it took on a plodding feeling as I read. I also found I didn't really like the characters all that much although I tried to. And finally I felt there were too many unanswered questions for me at the end.

I will be curious to hear what my book group thought about this title but me, I'd rather be reading Jane Eyre or Rebecca, especially for the first time.

PS - I wrote this book review yesterday in the morning. The afternoon found me browsing at the library when I came across an audio of The Thirteen Tales. Apparently I haven't quite finished with this book and now will begin listening to the discs hoping that I enjoy this venue better than the book. Traditionally I have never enjoyed audios as much as a book, but hope spring eternal here.