The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea is an amateur biographer and bookworm who works at her father’s antique bookstore. One day, she is contacted by Vida Winter, the country’s best-loved novelist, who asks her to write her biography. Vida Winter’s reclusiveness is almost as famous as her stories, and she is known to lie to journalists who try to find out more about her life. But it seems that now she is ready to tell the truth at last. Margaret travels to Ms Winter’s house in Yorkshire, and begins to unravel a Gothic tale of family secrets – a tale that forces her to confront the truth about her own past.

It’s no wonder that The Thirteenth Tale is so immensely popular among book bloggers. It truly is a book for book lovers. Early in the book, Margaret says this about herself and her work:

Lives—dead ones—are just a hobby of mine. My real work is in the bookshop. My job is not to sell the books—my father does that—but to look after them. Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Though they’re not old enough to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me, even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as they are on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.

How could I not love her after this? But there are more reasons that make The Thirteenth Tale so appealing to bibliophiles than than all the references to the quiet joys of a bookish life, and to Gothic classics like Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw or The Woman in White. There’s also the fact that The Thirteenth Tale is, among other things, a story about the process of telling stories in itself, and about the relationship between stories and truth.

The way all these references to Gothic classics are embedded in the plot is so clever. I recognized Vida Winter’s story as soon as she begun to tell it. And no, I didn’t know how it all was going to turn out, but I was instantly reminded of Jane Eyre, of Rebecca, of Tideland, of “A Rose for Emily”, of every novel or story I’ve ever read with a classic Gothic feel, old or new.

And by this I don’t mean to say that The Thirteenth Tale is unoriginal. What I mean is that Diane Setterfield captured all these echoes and used them to tell a story that is both surprising and instantly familiar. The thrill of recognition The Thirteenth Tale gave me was almost the same thrill I feel when I recognize the structure of a favourite fairy tale in a story I’m reading. Diane Setterfield knows how to use this very familiarity to surprise the reader, and that's no small task.

The resolution to the mystery of Vida Winter's life surprised me when I had become convinced I wasn’t going to be surprised. I’m probably not the only one who had several “a-ha!” moments, moments when I thought I had figured it all out, only to be proven wrong every time. Diane Setterfield uses the right clues to make the reader reach the wrong conclusions. But like Margaret Lea eventually realises, the truth is in the story all along, hidden in plain sight. And it makes sense that in a novel about stories the answer to the mystery is carefully concealed in words that go unnoticed. I’m sure I will appreciate the way this plot is crafted even more when I return to this book. Now I know exactly what I have to pay attention to.

The Thirteenth Tale is a very enjoyable read, and one that I’ll certainly return to. I’ll leave you with one more wonderful bookish quote:

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 fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

And this is probably my favourite passage in the whole book:

When I came to myself Dr. Clifton was there. He put an arm around me. “I know,” he said. “I know.”
He didn’t know, of course, not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. 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. “I know,” he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”

Other Blog Reviews:
Bold.Blue.Adventure
Framed and Booked
Pardon my French
Biblio Addict
Here, There and Everywhere
Trish's Reading Nook
Melody's Reading Corner
Bell Literary Reflections
Everyday Reads
Stuff as Dreams Are Made On
Valentina's Room
Stainless Steel Droppings
A Striped Armchair
The Hidden Side of a Leaf
Book-a-Rama
Becky's Book Reviews
Musings of a Bookish Kitten
Once Upon a Bookshelf
My Year of Reading Seriously
Maw Books
So Many Books, So Little Time
The Movieholic & Bibliophile's Blog
Some Reads
Reading Adventures
Out of the Blue
Lost in a Good Story
An Adventure in Reading
Glitterless Gold
Mari Reads
5-Squared
In Spring it is the Dawn
Blogging 'bout Books
Books.Lists.Life
Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books
Dog Ear Diary
The Bluestocking Society
Subliminal Intervention

(I believe that's the most reviews of a book I've ever found! It really is a book lovers kind of book. Let me know if I missed yours.)