Diane Setterfield

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.

A Novel

The Thirteenth Tale

Sarah Sammis

"'Once upon a time there were twins—'" (p. 48) begins Vida Winter's thirteenth tale. It's also the story of her life but it's up to Margaret Lea, a young biographer obsessed with twins to sort out the truth behind her tale.

The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield is about family secrets and the ways which those secrets make and break people. The book has many different layers of story telling, from the protagonists own dark secrets to her employer's secrets which are slowly revealed in flashback and dialogue.

Margaret Lea who works in her father's bookshop reluctantly goes to Yorkshire on the request of the reclusive bestselling author Vida Winter. From there the novel unfolds to a reveal the dark history of the Angelfield family, and especially the almost feral twin girls Adeline and Emmeline.

Although the theme of the magical powers of twins comes close to being overwrought, I found The Thirteenth Tale a compelling page turner. The Angelfield family history is steeped in Gothic horror motifs. The book was so good that I ended up staying up all night (something I never do) to finish it.

Similar books I recommend:

 * The House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier
 * The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
 * Outside the Lavender Closet by Martha A. Taylor (review coming; see chapter at the weekend house)
 * The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay
 * The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Vicky  Nuñez 

Having just finished reading this book I feel like I need to reread it immediately. This book turns your world upside-down & you start wondering what the hell is going on & by the end everything makes sense, but you wish you could reread it to truly appreciate it's brilliance. 

At least that's what happened to me. And I'm sure it will happen to you too.

I liked Mrs. Love and her socks. Overall I had to keep going but it wasn't because I truly loved the book - something compelled me to just want to know the story despite not really feeling overall too invested in it. This was my first audiobook ever and I think that helped me get through it - not sure if I would have been able to read it.

Ashley Denktas

Sha-Tyra Clausell

Amazing details. The story was told perfectly . I love a story that could go any way. The ending was well done. !!

Colleen

4 Stars

This review contains some spoilers.

The Thirteenth Tale is a literary mystery with a Gothic air to it. Margaret Lea is rather aimless in life, helping out in her father's rare book store and sometimes writing biographies, but mostly just sinking into her own past to wallow. She is contacted out of the blue by a famous author, Miss Vida Winter, who wishes Margaret to write her biography. Miss Winter is elderly, reclusive, and dying. But after spending her entire life lying to cover her past, she wants to reveal the truth about her life before she dies. The story follows Margaret through the complicated web of Miss Winter's life as she slowly tells her story.

The narrative had a Gothic feel to it. It was strongly influenced by Jane Eyre and makes many references to that book. It also outright spoils the ending of Jane Eyre so I would recommend reading that first. The subject matter was dark, sometimes touches on some disturbing subjects (view spoiler)[such as incest, self-mutilation, and extreme neglect (hide spoiler)].

The setting was kept deliberately vague (according to the author) but it seemed that the later part was set in the 50's or 60's with flashbacks where Miss Winter told the story of her childhood. Because it was told in a narrative format, the switching between time periods was not bad. There were definitely times when I wished that the time setting had been more concrete and detailed. I do love richly detailed historical fiction, so I felt gypped at missing out on a more historical setting.

The theme of twins plays heavily in the story. It not only contains twins but spends a lot of time circling around the psychology of twins and their inherent connection pondering just how linked the minds and souls of twins are. I have always found that subject interesting so it kept me intrigued. (view spoiler)[However, I did get fed up with Margaret's self-absorption concerning her own twin. Margaret's reaction to finding out she had a twin that died at birth was similar to Nell's in The Forgotten Garden - selfish and over the top. Just like Nell let finding out she was adopted permanently destroy her relationship with her family, so did Margaret let her discovering of her dead twin stunt her life. While twins do undeniably have connections, she clearly obsessed over her dead sister to the point that she was only ghosting through life. Of course it turns out that this was supposed to reiterate the ending of Miss Winter's story, but Margaret's reations still seemed over the top. The revelation about Margret's mother never getting over the death of her other daughter came too late because for most of the story it appears that Margaret was the one who initiated the rift between mother and daughter. And it was insulting when Margaret gushed her over the top empathy about Miss Winter's upcoming loss of her sister comparing it to her own loss. Not all grief is equal. For her to say that the loss of a sister at birth (even with the twin connection) was the same as the death of a sister someone spent over seventy years living with was unrealistic and insulting. It showed the extreme selfishness that Margaret put into romanticizing her lost twin. (hide spoiler)] 

Margaret as a character was actually flat and rather insipid at times. This still worked in the story though since she is mostly just a conduit for Miss Winter's story. Miss Winter was by far the more interesting story, and her narrative takes up most of the book with Margaret's sections mostly just filling in the gaps.

The writing was pretty and poetic but also dense at times. It was easy to lose the thread of the story if I did not read the book for a day or two, but I also found that this was not a book I could read for more than an hour or two at a time. The beautiful phrases were too smothering in large doses, and it definitely veered towards purple prose in some parts. Nevertheless, the mystery element of uncovering the truth about Miss Winter's past was interesting. I won't spoil the ending. But while I enjoyed it, it also seemed like the story tied up almost too neatly considering how complex the story was. But I am still glad that I read it. It was a nice change of pace.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 3 Stars
Writing Style: 4 Stars
Characters: 4 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 4 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

Audrey Lord

So far, so good! I'm loving it and I'm only like nine pages in!

i read this book when i was younger and i'm not surprised i was traumatised like why is everyone fucking crazy here... but why is it also so good

Cheri McElroy

Margaret lives in her family bookstore, with a sadness from her past that won't let her go. Vida Winter is a famous author with a mysterious past that she has never revealed. But now, Ms. Winter wants Margaret to write her story. 

This book is a love letter to bookstores, stories, and readers. It strikes the perfect mix of elements in a gothic novel, and I adored it.

P. Rose

This was a bit of a slow read for me, honestly. The parts of Margaret herself were rather dull, however the parts of Ms Winter filled one with intrigue and mystery. That was enough for me to enjoy this book, thankfully.

Cams Campbell

I read this after following a lead on Olivia Coleman when we finished watching Broadchurch. I saw that she was to be in a televised version with Vanessa Redgrave. The story sounded intriguing so I downloaded the Audible version and made it my penultimate book for the 25-book challenge on Goodreads. 

It started out very well indeed. In fact, rarely am I ever drawn into an audiobook quite so quickly. It was read by Jenny Agutter and she did a marvellous job of hooking me right away. As the tale progressed however, I found myself becoming less and less enchanted, so it gradually went down from five to four and ended up with three stars. It seemed to be trying hard to be literature in the style of Daphne du Maurier, and while it got close, the plot had too flimsy of an ending. 

The TV adaptation was on the same day that I finished the book, but I didn't know until half an hour after it had started, so we saved it to watch on new year's eve. It was reasonably entertaining, but I feel that the two great performers weren't given the space to show us what they can really do. Shame.

Mary Rose Luksha

I picked this book up on a whim. I read the back of the book and it sounded kind of lame, but I figured what the heck so I opened up to the first page and I was completely captivated. But then, I love Gothic literature. I feel like this was the perfect story line to write a modern Gothic novel, because today, no one could write in the Gothic style without either a) intentionally or otherwise mocking the style, or b) being mocked endlessly by the majority of critics. It's about a woman who lives inside books, they're her world. So she's able to write somewhat Gothic-ly, but then also through the characters she's able to step outside of that style and sort of say, "Why isn't that Gothic of me?" without being pretentious or goofy.

It did take a bit before I could get behind the big unveiling of Vera Winter's secret, though. I see how everything led up to it, but when it was revealed I could help a little "...really?" escaping my mouth.

But otherwise, elegantly written, compelling, and powerful. It was a wonderful read, one of the books that I'm jealous of other people for not having had the enjoyment of reading it yet.

'The Thirteenth Tale' is an emotional mystery in the vein of Daphne du Maurier's 'Rebecca', about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling. Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield House. As she digs deeper, Margaret discovers tragedy and secrets about her own past.

Jenna

I remember trying to read this book a few years ago and not being into it. I kind of remember I thought the writing was kitschy and trying to sound smarter than it actually was. I kind of still feel the same. 

That being said, I started reading this book after a friend loaned it to me when I forgot to bring a book on a camping trip. I thought it started off a bit slow (which is maybe why I initially put it down) but once the story picked up I got pretty into it. It ended up being a fun read that I really liked. If you can get past the writing (and maybe I'm the only one that was annoyed by it) it ends up being a really nice book.

Sarah Escorsa

I must admit I was really sceptical before I started reading this book: too many good reviews, too many comparisons to the works of Daphne du Maurier, the Brontë sisters... I've been disappointed so many times in the past few years by books that were highly praised, over-hyped and over-rated that I had low expectations for this one. Hence my surprise when The Thirteenth Tale turned out to be an excellent read!! I've always been a fan of Gothic/Victorian-style mysteries and this book has all the required elements of the genre: bleak houses, strange families, secrets buried deep in the past... What's more, how can I resist a book that starts in a bookstore and centres around a writer and her books:) I enjoyed the plot very much although one section of the book is not as well-paced as the rest (part of the second half). Still, this is a wonderful tale, very well-written and definitely one of my best reads of the year.

Shafel McDowall

4.5 stars. 

The story was engrossing but not too dramatic. I substrated 0.5 stars because I was bored with Margaret for most of the story, I almost skipped her parts to be honest. 

I had to take a break from reading this book because I thought it was boring, I realised later that my frame of mind at the time wasn't suited to the book. I am very happy I decided to finish it. This is definitely a book for the winter or fall.

Samiha Tasnim

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.


A good story is always more darling than a broken piece of truth.


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


Returning to myself, I found that my thoughts had been rearranged in my absence.


As famous for her secrets as for her stories, she was a perfect mystery.


People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.


I’d expected the world to give up its childlike and familiar appearance to show me its secret, adult side. Instead, cloaked in my new independence, I felt younger than ever.


For me, to see is to read.


There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.


I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.


What is it that allows human beings to see through each other’s pretendings?


One gets so used to one’s own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people,


I shall start at the beginning. Though of course the beginning is never where you think it is. Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born… Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.


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.


I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers at the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginning from the shape of later events.


The incendiary magic she possessed was so strong she could set fire to water if she wanted to badly enough.


Oh! The outrageous sensation of crumpled paper; words gone wild, flying in all directions, senseless. My heart broke.


We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.

When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

Melody Izard

Moors and mist and ghost children. Incest, mental hospitals and old dusty book stores. Twins, gardeners and unsolved murders. Mysterious bones, missing governesses and melancholy mothers. This is a classic, gothic novel set in who-knows what year. The story is told to us by a writer giving an interview to her biographer who has a melancholy story of her own. Tales twist and turn and float mist-like while truth is revealed. Mysteries are solved and lives are turned around and you even get that feel-good watery-eye, sniffle-nose expectation that people are going to live happily ever after. Magical!

Sheila Goicea

First off, this definitely is not a bad book. Do not be swayed by the 3 stars that I have granted it. I had no idea what to expect going into it, but the plot line did take me off-guard. It was interesting. 

I am a person that loves detail, and this book was full of that--so I cannot complain there. But what there was in detail, there lacked in a building of the plot line. If you were to ask me where the climax was in this novel, I wouldn't be able to tell you. There wasn't really one. The plot line slowly revealed itself throughout, but there wasn't a point where I felt that I "couldn't put the book down," which is a bummer. 

Needless to say, Ms. Setterfield is an exquisite author and I thoroughly enjoyed her writing style.

This review can also be viewed on my blog: She's Going Book Crazy

Jennifer

I have many thoughts about this book some of them I can not put in words. Lets say this: This book will be in my mind for a long time. Something scary and creepy is about this book. 
It is not a quick read for sure, but once you are into it you won't be able to put it down.
Unfortunately I was not able to really connect with any characters.

Olivera Mitić

Mnogo volim ove mračne porodične sage smeštene u starim i podjednako mračnim kućama. Plus mi se dopada i aspekt priče u priči, što knjigama uvek daje neku meta dimenziju. 

Nije najsavršeniji roman na svetu, ali razrešenje je zadovoljavajuće (možda čak i previše, računajući koliko je sve glatko razrešeno i palo na mesto). Drži pažnju sve vreme i ima neku neodoljivu atmosferu. Jedina stvar koja mi je s vremena na vreme išla na živce bila je glorifikacija onoga što bi neki nazvali 'reader culture'. Volimo svi knjige, u redu je.

Elem, drago mi je da sam je konačno pročitala.

Анастасия Розова

The book wasn't the page turner, in fact, it was kind of slow, but I still enjoyed it very much! There were some plot twists I didn't see coming, and that really pleased me. The book is definitely worth reading, so don't let anything stop you. You just have to live through first pages and then you'll want to know the whole story.

Kimberly

The premise of this was intriguing: a story within a story with spooky vibes. I thought it was going to be Shadow of the Wind-esque, but alas it was not. I didn't connect with the story. I was bored at times and didn't care about the characters. Also didn't get the spooky vibes. I own other Setterfield books so I'm willing to try again.

Renee Delcourt

Oh man this book is a wild freaking ride.

I went into this book knowing very little and to be honest I think that is the best way for someone to read this book. To say the least most people say its a mystery of why an author picks this woman to be her biographer, but I would greatly disagree with that. This book is more of a story about siblings and their relationships. Its hard to explain it without giving anything away so I will leave it be. 

After reading it you are left with this compulsion to read it again so you can read it with the knowledge of what's actually happening and see it with new eyes. I kept having to jump back and forth because I kept trying to connect scenes. 

The book is soooo atmospheric and has a very gothic feeling to the writing. I really love how immersive it feels. 

I was so freaking emotional at the end of the book that it was a bit ridiculous. Even with how dark and twisted the whole story is you feel so much compassion for the characters and hearing their stories can be a little overwhelming. I truly loved the entire experience though. I highly recommend this to any gothic readers or mystery lovers. Such a good book.

Danica Holdaway

A story of twins, ghosts, and writing. This epic follows a damaged or cursed family and the secrets it held - finally revealed by the famous author Vida Winter as she is dying. This writing is beautiful and the story unique. A great read for fall/winter!

The Thirteenth Tale A Novel

Reviews