Book summary

In this delicious, mind-bending, modern Gothic mystery, famous author Vida Winter has given countless fictional versions of her own life, confounding her biographers. However, at the end of her life, she contacts young Margaret Lea, who comes to the sprawling Angelfield estate in Yorkshire, and begins the task of figuring out fact from fiction, truth from shadow. As Vida's dark history unfurls, it becomes clear that it shares eerie similarities to Margaret's own. Both women have morbid pasts that come back to haunt them, both figuratively and literally.

Media reviews

"[Diane] Setterfield has crafted an homage to the romantic heroines of du Maurier, Collins and the Bronte's. It is a contemporary gothic tale whose excesses...can be forgiven for the thrill of the storytelling." [Starred review.]

  "This novel is a literary tribute by the author to gothic and romantic novels enjoyed in her own English girlhood -- especially JAYNE EYRE. Pick any five consecutive sentences of THE THIRTEENTH TALE and you may find at most one flat, ordinary formulation. This is "poetry" or poetic prose as Heidegger saw it: "thickening" (German Dichtung). That is, ordinary words and experiences carry weight beyond what most writers make language bear. No glossary needed for this tale of Yorkshire. Just bring your heart. ***



Can two depressingly dysfunctional generations of the Angelfield family finally spawn normal offspring? Must twin girls neglected by their parents remain weird for life? The novel asks why does it take Margaret Lea, an outsider biographer, whose twin had died at birth, to tell when Britain's greatest novelist, Vida Winter, is lying about her family. "Trust but verify" is Margaret's model and it helps her both unravel the Angelfields and their tragedy and come to terms with herself and her parents. ***



THE THIRTEENTH TALE makes a case that the classic way to tell a tale (especially when the yarn is deliberately gothic and romantic) is always the best way: with a beginning which assumes nothing, a middle which blends the elements into fiendishly complex puzzles, enigmas and terrors, and a brief end and coda in which all is explained. Does that also sound like the best kind of detective story? ***

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