The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The autumn season is here; Halloween is right around a corner. Are you looking for a good mystery to snuggle up to? If so, take yourself to the library and pick up this book. I am not typically a mystery reader. In fact, I never would've read this book on my own, but it was a chosen title for our book club. I was hooked from the beginning, and thoroughly enjoyed plowing my way through to the end. So, pull on thick socks, light a fire, heat up some apple cider, and enjoy weaving your way through The Thirteenth Tale.

Here's the 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