The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea lives a quiet life in the apartment above her father's beloved bookshop.  She's spent her life hiding away there, devouring books of all sorts, to hide from the secret she discovered about her birth when she was ten; she was born a twin, and her sister died.

Vida Winter is the most prolific writer of the age (think JK Rowling with 100s of novels), and is a curiousity.  She has never given an honest interview, and no one can discover the roots of her past.

Miss Winter is dying, and is tortured by the past she has written novels to escape from thinking about.  She sends for Miss Lea to write her biography (something Margaret plays at) and begins to tell her a story about Charlie and Isabelle, twins Emmeline and Adeline, Missus, John-the-dig, Hester, a haunted house nestled crookedly in the English moors, loss, heartbreak, suffering, and a devestating fire that changes everything.

Written as an homage to great writers (mostly Charlotte and Emily Bronte), it's clear that Diane Setterfield has a love for both reading and writing, the art of doing both.  Both characters have escaped from their private pains within the pages of books, one by reading, one by writing.

The beginnings of Miss Winter's story are disturbing, but I couldn't put it down.  Unlike other novels Setterfield expects a certain intelligence from her reader, and she does not plainly spell things out.  You are left to assume based on clues for much of the novel, and then there'd be a line somewhere that would confirm what you assumed.  This helped pace the story I thought, and got the reader involved.

An interesting note, timing is never discussed.  What era are these stories set in?  Miss Winter's childhood takes place on a great estate in the English countryside with servants, governesses, and cottages set on the property paid rent to the man in the big house.  All that made me think .... sometime in the 1800s?  Since Jane Eyre is so prevelant throughout, it had be sometime after the novel was published, so mid-1800s.  They also discuss the The Women in White, which was published in 1860.  So it would have to be even later 1800s.

But what about the older Miss Winter?  What time is it then?  Well she's in her early 70s, so if her childhood was 1880, it'd be 1950.  Which fits with the other clues of hand written letters, no telephone, few cars, and lots of trains.  Anyway, that little side mystery of "what time is this?" kept me going too.

**SPOILER**
The question of Emmeline and Adeline's parentage.  Isabelle and Charlie were brother and sister, but Charlie was obsessively and violently in love with her.  Isabelle believes the twin girls are daughters from her late husband, but the teller of the story (Miss Winter) believes their father is Charlie.  The twins are never "right in the head" (said throughout the book) and I thought this was the author using more clues to get us to believe incest had occurred.  They weren't right in the head because they were inbreed, and had mental abnormalities.  Which lead to another clue about the age, the medical science was not extensive on behavior disorders or mental conditions.

All told, the book is a dark and twisting story that's incredibly well written.  I'm still in awe over some of it.  The change of use in pronouns, they, we, I.  Such a subtle thing that I did pick up on, and is pointed out by Miss Lea, but after the truth is revealed, wow does it all make more sense.

Makes me want to read Jane Eyre and Wurthering Heights.  Recommended.  Especially for those of us that love reading and a good story.