Sailing in a Sea of Words

Book: The Thirteenth Tale

Author: Diane Setterfield

Genre: Fiction/Mystery/Thriller

Summary: Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchanting stories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate lives for herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about her extraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret for so long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her own painful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret is mesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness - featuring the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves. -Washington Square Press, 2006.

Sorry this review wasn't out sooner. I had so many travel excursions lately that I had no time for reading and therefore couldn't finish the book earlier.

I'm going to be honest. It wasn't love at first sight when I initially found this book. The cover certainly intrigued me, but when I read the summary, something about it nagged at me. I didn't buy it the first time I saw it, nor the second. By the third time though, I decided there was a reason I kept coming back to it, so I gave in and bought it.

Margaret Lea is a young woman who lives above her family's bookshop, living a partially reclusive existence by staying within the safety of the books she reads. When a famous reclusive author asks her to be her biographer, Margaret must confront her own tragedy while opening herself up to the world for the first time - and deal with the consequences of making herself vulnerable to the people who now surround her.

The plot is definitely a slow burn, so a word of caution. The good stuff doesn't come until about fifty pages into the book. Even then, the plot teetered like a high wire act in keeping my interest. It's not that the writing was bad - far from it. The descriptions were extensive, the imagery was vivid, and the characters themselves were especially intense and poignant.

It was, to be frank, because I had seen this type of plot before. I didn't guess everything correctly, which is good thing because predictability is bad, but there were enough familiar plot points and twists that my interest began to wane. The fun was in guessing and reading on to see whether I was right or not. It does have a great spooky factor, which made it a perfect read for this time of year. I enjoyed it for what it was. I liked being disturbed, nervous, inquisitive, and off-balance. I felt like I was walking with Margaret as she steps out from her safety net to fulfill a simple favor and ends up going on an adventure instead. The focus is so centered on Margaret and Vida that it allowed me to breathe and focus on them rather than be distracted by larger events. It's more of a character study than an epic novel, and I appreciated the change.

Setterfield wrote an incredible story and I would still recommend it to others, especially those who want a nice "ghost" story.

Will I read her other works? Possibly. I'm not running to buy her next novel, but I'm glad I gave in and read this one.

I give The Thirteenth Tale an A.

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