The Thirteenth Tale
It has been lying next to my bed for a few months now, but it wasn’t until last week I felt that excitement and curiosity when I looked at it. I picked it up and started reading the same day and I found myself falling deeper and deeper in a very strange story. I wasn’t entirely certain what to expect when I started reading, I had, of course, read on the back, but you can only get so much information from there. And now, when looking back on the book and its story, I realize that what’s on the back is practically nothing.
The book’s main character is Margaret Lea, she is the books “I”, but the story itself revolves mostly about the strange author Vida Winter. No one really knows who she is, not that people haven’t tried to figure that out, unsuccessful though. Miss Winter has written fifty-six books in as many years and she is loved all over England. Now she’s old and she has decided to tell the truth, and she chooses Margaret to be her biographer. Margaret travelled to Miss Winter’s house and she is just about to say no to the project, when Miss Winter says something that caught Margaret’s attention. She changes her mind and accepts, and thus the work begins. Miss Winter tells Margaret her story of being one of the untamable twins, Adeline and Emmeline, in the Angelfield house, where they lived with their mother Isabelle and their uncle Charlie, the gardener John-the-dig and the housekeeper known as the missus. As the story unveils, Margaret understands that there is not just one secret hiding inside Angelfield house, but a great many.
The Thirteenth Tale is a very, very strange book. Dazzling and enchanting are words that one could use to describe it. It is simple wonderful, a joy to read. The four hundred pages are filled with so many secrets that one can never be entirely sure if one’s on the right track. The book takes crazy twists and turns in nearly every chapter and I’m not even sure now, when I’m done, that I’ve sucked up all the details. From the beginning and all the way to the end, I was surprised, and I am not one that an author can fool to easily. That’s why I usually never read mystery novels, because I can always figure out everything long before the end is near, and how fun is that? But The Thirteenth Tale is something different, I thought I had everything figured out just for the story to take another twist and another turn, leaving me with nothing but the need to keep reading so I could try to get to the end of every secret before the book ended. I did, in some of the mysteries, but as I said before, there a great many in this book.
Diane Setterfield is the author that has written this marvelous book. Her imagination seems to be never ending, just like a really great writer. And she is great. The book is fantastic, yes; the story is amazing and incredible, like nothing I have ever read before. But the language, oh, the language is wonderful. It’s a joy to read this book, because the language is so soft, like the soft waves on a calm sea. The words, how she builds up everything, it’s breathtaking. It’s one of those books that I never really will let go. I will ponder over the end for a long time, because the end was quite surprising, just like the endings in every great book. All I can think of now, as I’m writing this, is when can I read it again? It’s just one of those books, one that you never really forget, one that you never really let go of, one that you go back to and read again and again and again and it will never get boring.
The book’s main character is Margaret Lea, she is the books “I”, but the story itself revolves mostly about the strange author Vida Winter. No one really knows who she is, not that people haven’t tried to figure that out, unsuccessful though. Miss Winter has written fifty-six books in as many years and she is loved all over England. Now she’s old and she has decided to tell the truth, and she chooses Margaret to be her biographer. Margaret travelled to Miss Winter’s house and she is just about to say no to the project, when Miss Winter says something that caught Margaret’s attention. She changes her mind and accepts, and thus the work begins. Miss Winter tells Margaret her story of being one of the untamable twins, Adeline and Emmeline, in the Angelfield house, where they lived with their mother Isabelle and their uncle Charlie, the gardener John-the-dig and the housekeeper known as the missus. As the story unveils, Margaret understands that there is not just one secret hiding inside Angelfield house, but a great many.
The Thirteenth Tale is a very, very strange book. Dazzling and enchanting are words that one could use to describe it. It is simple wonderful, a joy to read. The four hundred pages are filled with so many secrets that one can never be entirely sure if one’s on the right track. The book takes crazy twists and turns in nearly every chapter and I’m not even sure now, when I’m done, that I’ve sucked up all the details. From the beginning and all the way to the end, I was surprised, and I am not one that an author can fool to easily. That’s why I usually never read mystery novels, because I can always figure out everything long before the end is near, and how fun is that? But The Thirteenth Tale is something different, I thought I had everything figured out just for the story to take another twist and another turn, leaving me with nothing but the need to keep reading so I could try to get to the end of every secret before the book ended. I did, in some of the mysteries, but as I said before, there a great many in this book.
Diane Setterfield is the author that has written this marvelous book. Her imagination seems to be never ending, just like a really great writer. And she is great. The book is fantastic, yes; the story is amazing and incredible, like nothing I have ever read before. But the language, oh, the language is wonderful. It’s a joy to read this book, because the language is so soft, like the soft waves on a calm sea. The words, how she builds up everything, it’s breathtaking. It’s one of those books that I never really will let go. I will ponder over the end for a long time, because the end was quite surprising, just like the endings in every great book. All I can think of now, as I’m writing this, is when can I read it again? It’s just one of those books, one that you never really forget, one that you never really let go of, one that you go back to and read again and again and again and it will never get boring.