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The Thirteenth Tale
Jun. 25th, 2020 05:02 pmI loved Once Upon A River by Diane Setterfield, which I read earlier this year, so I decided to give The Thirteenth Tale a try. My intention was to break my recent bad habit of skimming the books I was reading, and I chose this book as I remembered the author's prose being too exquisite to abuse by not reading it properly.
And I was correct that I wanted to savour this book - it is beautifully written and very absorbing. It tells the story of Margaret Lea, asked by a famous author to come stay in her house and hear the story of her life, as it is drawing to its end. Margaret makes for a very sympathetic narrator, with her complex and relatable interactions with books and spaces where books reside. She also has an emotional secret that ties her more closely to the reclusive author, Vida Winter, than she would like to admit.
The book is more gothic and mysterious in tone than Once Upon A River - the story that Vida tells (apparently finally the truth of her background after she has spent decades spinning obvious fabrications) is more like a fable than a biography. But the characters and situations it describes are compelling and it definitely drew me in.
The main mystery did grow a bit wearing towards the end, especially when it was artificially delayed further by the inclusion of a diary that told only aspects of the story that had already been described. And the final reveal didn't quite work for me - there were too many things about it that didn't make sense.
However, the conclusion of the subplot (involving the caterer Margaret meets on visiting the author's childhood home) was wonderfully satisfying, as was the conclusion of Margaret's own story at the very end.
So, a couple of hiccups along the way, but overall a book I very much enjoyed, and which served my purpose of capturing my full attention on the narrative very well.
And I was correct that I wanted to savour this book - it is beautifully written and very absorbing. It tells the story of Margaret Lea, asked by a famous author to come stay in her house and hear the story of her life, as it is drawing to its end. Margaret makes for a very sympathetic narrator, with her complex and relatable interactions with books and spaces where books reside. She also has an emotional secret that ties her more closely to the reclusive author, Vida Winter, than she would like to admit.
The book is more gothic and mysterious in tone than Once Upon A River - the story that Vida tells (apparently finally the truth of her background after she has spent decades spinning obvious fabrications) is more like a fable than a biography. But the characters and situations it describes are compelling and it definitely drew me in.
The main mystery did grow a bit wearing towards the end, especially when it was artificially delayed further by the inclusion of a diary that told only aspects of the story that had already been described. And the final reveal didn't quite work for me - there were too many things about it that didn't make sense.
However, the conclusion of the subplot (involving the caterer Margaret meets on visiting the author's childhood home) was wonderfully satisfying, as was the conclusion of Margaret's own story at the very end.
So, a couple of hiccups along the way, but overall a book I very much enjoyed, and which served my purpose of capturing my full attention on the narrative very well.
