Review: The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

She is bound to her sister. She is bound. 

This story started off with beautiful worded passages and welcomed me in with the reading/book loving Margaret, daughter of a book store owner. 

She's a biographer (dilettante in her words) and is asked by Vida Winter, England's most popular and proficient fiction novel writer. She's shocked but intrigued and also wary. Vida is completely mysterious with no one knowing anything true about her or her life. Therefore, Margaret makes Vida tell her three true things and wants time to investigate them. 

What follows is story that started off a love letter to book lovers turns into storytime as Vida divides her life into tales and relays them to Margaret. 

I don't want to spoil anything, my updates have spoilers in them if you care for more details, but as Vida seems to be an unreliable narrator, the reader spends a lot of the time questioning what is true and searching for the meaning behind what she is telling Margaret. 

I enjoyed the curled up with a blanket and by a cozy fire the segments with Vida relaying her story to Margaret; there is a unsettled feeling to them as incest, madness, ghosts, and mystery prevail through them. I wasn't as much into Margaret's life story and the connection of twins, her constant talk of her ghost twin and thinking she saw her in mirrors annoyed me more than helped add to the creepy vibe. 

The ending did have some surprising reveals but I did swing from "oh this is just going to cop out with a paranormal explanation" to "oh, well, ok, guess that can make sense". 

Overall, the story felt uneven from the beginning to the end and I'm not sure I felt the build up, the pace is too even keeled for that. There was something compelling to the writing and story and I lay that all on Vida telling her story to Margaret. Some gorgeous passages, some characters I wish could have been filled out more, and at times good unsettling vibes.

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60%

 

*Spoilers in update*

So if Vida was/is Adeline and Adeline is the "evil" twin, I'm very worried for Margaret.

They don’t realize that I am alive, she thought. They don’t know that anyone is alive but themselves. It is a tribute to her goodness that she didn’t find them monstrous. Instead, she felt sorry for them.

These twins are freaking me the f out. Give me all the creepy crawlies books but children, nah, too spooky for me.

Like I mentioned before, unreliable narrators (Vida) in books instantly put my paranoid back up, I'm wondering if the Dr. that talked to Margaret about Vida is even a Dr. or if Vida paid him?

Still, a doctor’s wife apparently dead in the music room was a problem he couldn’t ignore.

Few can! 

I feel like we lost some of Isabelle here, she comes home a widow and then when we see her next, she's being shipped off to an asylum. I feel like there could be a horrifying creepy novella about her story there.

Yet the man in the brown suit was a figment of her imagination. I should have expected it. She was a spinner of yarns, wasn’t she? A storyteller. A fables. A liar. And the plea that had so moved me—Tell me the truth—had been uttered by a man who was not even real.

Ok, so, yep, something that was supposed to be presumed true is proved false about what Vida said. I do like how Margaret is fact checking Vida but the absolutes of truth are still in lingering doubt.

I turned the handle and let the door swing open. There was movement! My sister! Almost I took a step toward her.

Margaret needs to relax. This always thinking she is seeing her sister in mirrors, is coming off exhausting. Maybe I'm not giving enough credence to how real the ghost part is or how much it impacts Margaret but this came off more annoying than spooky to me.

I lived in shadows, had made friends with my grief, but in my mother’s house I knew my sorrow was unwelcome. She might have loved a cheerful, chatty daughter, whose brightness would have helped banish her own fears. As it was, she was afraid of my silences.

Oof, another gorgeous passage that hits on those mother-daughter relationships and how individuals handle grief.

When Vida starts using "I" in the story it confused me at first, thinking Margaret was tying in there somehow but when I figured out what was happening, it feels like a significant switch.

Aurelius is a character I can't quite get a hold of, his inclusion is somewhat confusing. 

What is with all the mirrors and talk of ghosts in them???

20%

There will be spoilers in this book's updates, fyi.

* I think something like over 50 friends have read this book, only one (ONE!!!) mentioned the you-know-what relationship. Y'all. Give a woman a heads-up.

I’ve nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions. 

After this comment, I find myself on edge because now I'm thinking we've got an unreliable narrator. I get overly paranoid in stories like this.

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.

Gorgeously said and definitely setting a good tone for Halloween Bingo.

So the beginning confused a little bit, changing from Vida's pov to Margaret's but I like that Margaret doesn't seem fall into the unreliable narrator category.

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

The beginning of this really feels like a love letter to bookish people and I want to highlight so many passages.

I had a twin. Ignoring the tumult in my head, my curious fingers unfolded a sec-id piece of paper. A death certificate. My twin was dead.

What?? It's moving away from the book loveliness and I'm starting to feel the cold creepy in.

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

Book lovers across the globe: "NEVER!"

‘Once upon a time there were twins—“

We were both lone twins.

Ooook, my mind is going wild ranging from, Vida can't be her twin (thinking the death certificate was a lie) because of age difference, Vida is Margaret in the future

"[...]One should always pay attention to ghosts, shouldn’t one, Miss Lea?“

Is Margaret's twin haunting her, does Vida know it??? Or is this alluded to how the the death of her twin changed her family, her mother's depression?

She stared at the red beads of blood that were welling up along the livid line, then turned her gaze upon him. Her green eyes were wide with surprise and something like pleasure.

My theory that children are consistently the scariest things is given more credence. Also, "pleasure" had me hoping this wasn't going to go there but...

“It’s much better with a beau.”And when Sybilla asked her newfound friend, “How do you know?” Isabelle had the answer all ready: “Charlie.”

Y'All. Not where I thought this book was going to go, especially after that start. I noticed a lot of you put "Gothic" as descriptor in this book and I feel like some of the word was alluding to this and I will now have to question any brother and sister relationship in Gothics. 

[...]there was an incident that could lave been a scandal, and a vexed Isabelle told him that if that was how he intended to go about things then he would have to choose a different sort of woman. He turned from the daughters of minor aristocrats to those of farriers, farmers and foresters. Personally he couldn’t tell the difference, yet the world seemed to mind less.

There's some work being done in this passage.

‘Look.“ Isabelle turned to the parcels he had placed on the study desk, pulled the soft wrapping away, and stood back so that he could see. Slowly he turned his head and looked. The parcels were babies. Two babies. Twins.

Ok, so this is Vida's background story, see why she's been private her whole life. She said she would tell Margaret the truth, so I'm only going to go with 10% unreliable narrator here. 

Lovely beginning, some gorgeous passages, and then Isabelle and Charlie. I'm curious how the rest of the tales are going to go and if more of Margaret's family and death of her twin are going to be addressed more. 

Reading Update: Page 1

 It's Halloween Bingo time!

Reading 

(click on cover to go to GoodReads book page)

for the 

 bingo square.

 I also made up this veggie platter to help set the mood :)