Product Description

When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny.

All children mythologize their birth. . . . So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life: Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth remains an ever-present pain.

Disinterring the life she meant to bury for good, Vida mesmerizes Margaret with the power of her storytelling. Hers is a tale of gothic strangeness, featuring the Angelfield family -- including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline -- a ghost, a governess, and a devastating fire. Struck by a curious parallel between their stories, Margaret demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them.

The Thirteenth Tale is a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter, and in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #121038 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-12
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 14
• Binding: Audio CD

Amazon.com Review
Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.

There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:

"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."

She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."

"I am a biographer, I work with facts."

The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan

From Publishers Weekly
Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
The Thirteenth Tale received a reported $1 million advance in the United States and an even greater one in Britain. That, combined with comparisons of Diane Setterfield's storytelling techniques to that of the Brontës, makes this debut novel a publicity coup of sorts. Certainly, The Thirteenth Tale—a family drama, romance, bildungsroman, mystery, and ghost story—intrigued most critics. Yet not all agreed that the novel lives up to the hype. Dazzling writing, a suspenseful story-within-a-story, and rich plot twists made an imaginative story. Some reviewers, however, cited gaps in plotting, dull characters (especially the twins), and an unexceptional ending. In end, it's Setterfield's old-fashioned storytelling and love for literature that makes the novel stand out.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A perfect read...get your tea cup and plate of cookies on the table by your side and curl up for a great read!
I have recommended this book to all of my friends, and to random strangers as well! This is one of the most original plots - grabs you from the start and holds on for a wild ride. You will not want this book to end. It's one of those that calls to you from wherever you are..."read me, read me...". You might as well give up and just read the whole thing, cover to cover, as fast as you can!

The end ruins it
There were some very good aspects to this book. Unfortunately, the COMPLETELY implausible ending ruined it. Who could think that made any sense?

Brilliant
The moment I began to read, I felt like I'm suffering from an addiction.

Addicted to the story that made me lost track of time.
Time which seems to flow like fluid.

As I move reluctantly towards the end of the novel, I tried to take it slow but it's just impossible.
When you're suffering from an addiction, you crave for more, isn't it?

The story is about twins, but towards the end there is a major twist.

Best book I've read in 2008