The Thirteenth Tale

I have just finished reading The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. There is one passage in the book that captures my love of reading, the very essence of why I love to read so much.

“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.”

I knew exactly what she meant when she wrote that. Except I feel my appreciation for reading and literature has only grown, as I get older. I even re-read books again just to see if my current life experiences and outlook changes my interpretation and understanding of a story, especially stories that really moved me.

So the Thirteenth Tale is about a biographer named Margaret, who is hired by the illustrious and reclusive novelist Vida Winter. Miss Winter is finally ready to tell the world her story and the mystery behind the Thirteenth Tale. She is supposed to be like a J.K. Rowling, beloved author, but little is known about her. And so the story begins and you follow Miss Winter’s childhood and uncover the secrets from her past.

I thought Margaret’s character a bit odd. Margaret was born conjoined twin, and after detachment surgery (I doubt that’s what its called) her twin sister dies. Margaret doesn’t discover this truth until she’s older, probably around 8-10, but is haunted by this. She refers to her twin as her ghost and constantly whines about how incomplete she is. I could understand if she grew up with her twin and suddenly her twin dies, but she has no recollection of having a twin, let alone her death. Its all very strange how she feels like half of a person. That whole subplot just bothered me, but I’m not a twin, so I don’t know.

Overall I liked this book, but was not in love with it. It had gotten so much praise and I was expecting more from it because of the reviews. The story is definitely interesting and Setterfield took me in a direction that I wasn’t expecting. After the twist, I went back and saw that she did a great job of dropping hints to lead the reader to her twist. But at the same time, I felt like I had been there, done that. I feel lately that a lot of books try to shock you with this unexpected twist and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. After discovering the twist it actually made me question the story even more instead of feeling satisfied with the end result.