Monday, July 18, 2011

The Thirteenth Tale (by Dianne Setterfield)

Title:  The Thirteenth Tale
Author:  Dianne Setterfield
Blurber Blabber Review:  Buy it used or on sale!
Blurb:  The Thirteenth Tale is a debut novel by Diane Setterfield that pays respect to predecessor gothic novels like Jane Eyre and Rebecca.  Contrary to some misleading descriptions, this book is not a true ghost story.  Metaphors people!  After a lifetime of lies and mysteries, a famous author named Vida Winter tells her “true” life story to Margaret, a random bookstore owner’s daughter.  The book is interspersed with some present day sections following Margaret’s own less interesting story.  Vida Winter’s tale, on the other hand, contains oh so dysfunctional family members, sociopathic twins, ghostly mysteries, warped love, suspicious deaths and surprising twists.  What more can you ask for?  Savor some well written moments as Setterfield manages to capture various small emotions perfectly with words.  Some flaws are that Setterfield’s language may be a bit overdramatic at times (especially for audiobook people) and sometimes her unique and strange characters kind of disappear and fall flat at the end.  Book lovers will enjoy immersing themselves in the world of boutique bookstores and dilapidated mansions and will appreciate the nods to classic literary pieces.
Series: Nope - standalone.  
Language/Writing Style:  Margaret's story is in the third person while Vida Winter tells her story in the third, and then first, person.  Setterfield's writing style is reminiscent of gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and The Turn of the Screw, and while very descriptive and eloquent at times, there is still a lack of overall polish compared to the classic precedents. 
Adult Content: There are deaths, rapes, self-mutilation (think of it as extreme self tattoo-ing), and hints of incest.  
Rereadability:  This is sooo rereadable!  I read it a few years ago and then reread it recently for a book club after I'd forgotten most of the plot.  Even once I started remembering things, I still enjoyed seeing the twists and turns unfold.  I also like the way Setterfield writes - it can be a bit overdramatic at times, but that fits the whole quasi gothic theme, and she really makes you feel like you're there in that moment.  Ideally you want to reread it a couple years later after you've forgotten some plot points so that you can rediscover the surprises. 
Published: 2006 
Length:  416 pages

(Read on for the more detailed and SPOILER-filled "blabber" review)
Ok, this isn’t a YA book, but I had to reread this recently for a book club and thought I might as well review it, especially since I enjoyed reading it just as much the second time around.  The book begins with the introduction of the quasi-main character Margaret Lea, a young woman who works for her bookseller dad where they spend most of their days idling in their bookstore and reading their favorite books while sipping tea and cocoa.  Uh, can I have that life?!  Setterfield does an excellent job of diving you into that dusty literary world, to the point where you can almost smell the old books and hear the pages fluttering.  Margaret’s life is quiet and routine (want it), and Margaret herself is a pretty boring character.  Margaret also has serious hang-ups over her accidental childhood discovery that she was born with a conjoined twin who died when they were separated as babies.  I thought Setterfield was a little heavy-handed with this and found Margaret annoying at times with her obsessive moping.  Then again, I’ve never had a twin so I can’t really judge.  

Margaret’s life is interrupted by a letter from Vida Winter, a famous and prolific British author who has invited Margaret to hear her “true” story.  Vida Winter (I always think of her as Vida Winter.  No Vida, no Ms. Winter for me) is as famous for her numerous works as she is for her propensity to spin fantastic lies when interviewed about her real life.  Margaret, who has never read Vida Winter’s works, tries her first book “Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation,” and it’s love at first read.  As she nears the end of the twelfth story, Margaret soon discovers that there is no thirteenth tale (I thought Setterfield did a perfect job of capturing that sense of unease and anxiety when you realize a great book is ending too soon).  Vida Winter is a mystery wrapped in lies and has now offered to tell Margaret the truth before she dies from a mysterious and dramatic illness.  

“Tell me the truth.”  And Vida Winter does, or at least her version of the truth and in a roundabout way.  From this point on the novel is split into two stories.  One is the present day with Vida Winter telling her story to Margaret and various side plots where Margaret obsesses over her dead twin and attempts to verify various parts of Vida Winter’s story.  The other, is Vida Winter’s story which begins as a story about abnormal twin sisters and ends with a “ghost” story of a third half-sister who assumed one of the twin’s identities and is now Vida Winter.  Wait, what?!  

Vida Winter’s story begins with the “odd” Isabelle and Charlie Angelfield, a dysfunctional brother and sister who bond over their joint sado-masochism.  Their relationship goes beyond sibling affection and it is strongly hinted that Charlie fathered Isabelle’s twins, Emmeline and Adeline.  Isabelle and Charlie continue to live in their own crazytown as the twins are raised by the housekeeper, the Missus, and the gardener, John-the-dig.  I think that everyone in this family is a sociopath to a certain degree and I’m sure the incest didn’t help for the twins.  The Missus tries to raise the twins as normally as possible but soon discovers that genetics outweigh environment and the twins are miniature sociopaths who have no compassion for any other living thing except each other.  

Adeline and Emmeline are identical twins with very different personalities - it’s as though one whole personality was split between the two of them so that Adeline is filled with uncontrollable rage and violence, and Emmeline is gentle and meek.  They lead their lives by their own schedule and see the entire world as their playground, which means they have no problem with sneaking into neighbors’ houses and stealing food and things for their amusement.  However, things go too far one day when the teenage twins steal a baby carriage for their play and ditch the baby in the garden.  The local doctor, Dr. Maudsley, is called upon by the villagers to help and he sends his wife to try and talk sense to Isabelle.  Instead, his wife is attacked by a ghostly woman who the wife later identifies as Isabelle.  It’s uncertain who was the real attacker, but Isabelle has morphed into a shell of her former vivacious self and shuffles off to the loony bin.  

Dr. Maudsley hires a governess to improve the twins and along comes Hester.  A plain-looking, intellectual, and determined woman (a plain-looking governess - how very Jane Eyre).  During a conversation with Dr. Maudsley (who is no Rochester), Hester theorizes that while Adeline is generally a surly and wild monster, there is a “girl in the mist” deep within.  With Hester’s gentle prodding and manipulations, she and Dr. Maudsley decide to conduct an experiment and split up the girls.  Emmeline, while distraught at first, adapts, but Adeline goes totally bah-nah-nas and then catatonic.  Hester and Dr. Maudsley push through in the name of science and start to bond over their intellectual discussions.  One day Hester sees Emmeline and Adeline playing together in a field and rushes over to Dr. Maudsley’s house only to see the still catatonic Adeline sitting there.  Hester starts to lose it thinking she’s going mad and Dr. Maudsley tries to comforts her by kissing her.  Uh oh.  Wife Maudsley comes barging in and Hester runs away.  No I mean she really runs away - like left the Angelfield house never to be heard of again (although Margaret later discovers that she went to the US and was later reunited with Dr. Maudsley after his wife died).  

The twins are reunited and now have full run of the house unfettered by any governess.  As time passes, Isabelle dies in the loony bin and Charlie, distraught by the news, runs away never to be seen again...except by Vida Winter who finds him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot (was it really suicide, or was it Vida Winter?).  Soon the Missus dies and Vida Winter switches from the third person in her storytelling to the first person, as Adeline abruptly transforms.  Faced with having to take charge of the house and family, Vida tells Magaret that the girl in the mist emerged.  However, things keep getting worse as John-the-dig is killed when his ladder’s safety catch is tampered with (by who?) and then John-the-dig’s young assistant, Ambrose Proctor, falls for Adeline but after being spurned impregnates Emmeline.  I guess they do look alike.

Interspersed with Vida Winter’s story, we have snippets of the Margaret’s story which I found to be kinda blah since Margaret is a less interesting character.  Basically, Margaret obsesses about her dead twin sister a lot, meets Vida Winter’s handsome doctor, discovers a disfigured and burned Emmeline living with Vida Winter, and meets Aurelius Love, a simple baker who was born at the Angelfield manor but never knew his real mother.  Aurelius of course turns out to be Emmeline’s son and Margaret soon realizes that Vida Winter is not who she says she is.  

As Vida Winter is mourning Emmeline’s death, Margaret confronts her and asks for the true story.  Vida Winter obliges and revises her story from one about twins, to one about twins and a half sister.  Apparently Charlie had fathered a daughter who was about the same age as the twins and looked enough like them to pass for one of them.  This child was found and secretly raised by the Missus and John-the-dig and loved Emmeline, but not Adeline.  Unfortunately, Emmeline always loved Adeline first until her child, Aurelius, was born.  Consumed with jealousy, Adeline tries to kill Aurelius.  The ever-watching Vida Winter snatches him away and leaves him with a neighboring village woman, planning on returning after getting Emmeline to run away with her.  Vida Winter returns only to find Emmeline and Adeline fighting each other as a fire rages through the house.  Vida Winter grabs Emmeline’s wrist and struggles to pull her out, locking the door behind her.  However, the twin pulled from the fire is burned and unresponsive, and Vida Winter wonders which twin she saved.  She hopes, and chooses to believe, it’s Emmeline.  As help arrives, everyone mistakes Vida Winter for Adeline and so she continues with the lie for the rest of her life, eventually changing her name to Vida Winter.

Vida Winter dies shortly thereafter and Margaret finishes her biography but decides not to publish it.  She tells Aurelius his story and introduces him to his half-sister (after Ambrose left he started a family).  Vida Winter also left for Margaret the Thirteenth Tale, which is a short and dark take on Cinderella, where Cinderella is raped by the prince and gives birth to an illegitimate daughter.  The Thirteenth Tale is Vida Winter’s story.  It’s both the Cinderella story and the story she told Margaret.  But then Setterfield has to ruin a perfectly fine ending by having a cheesy moment where the ghost of Margaret’s twin visits her.  

While I am a notorious skimmer and flip-to-the-end spoiler-lover, I actually didn’t spoil the ending and just enjoyed reading as the story and mysteries unraveled.  I think Setterfield does a great job of capturing moments and feelings (like the anxiety of nearing the end of a good book) but sometimes overdoes it a bit (any moments related to Margaret and her twin obsession).  The pace was pretty good for the most part, but there were a few lags, especially with Margaret’s modern timeline.  I also think that Setterfield did a great job of setting up some of these great and strange characters, but then kinda fell short with them in the end.  Like Isabel and Charlie who were crazy and vivid characters, just slowly shuffled off and died in the end.  And I just couldn’t get why everyone loved Emmeline so much.  She was gentler than Adeline but she was incredibly selfish and simple-minded.  At first read I was annoyed with Adeline’s abrupt change in personality too but then when the secret twist was revealed at the end I thought she did it pretty well without making it too obvious by using the “girl in the mist” excuse.  

This is a great book club book because there are so many different interpretations and unanswered questions.  I’ve heard theories ranging from (a) Vida Winter actually was Adeline and she killed the ghost child to (b) Vida Winter is much more manipulative and evil than people think and killed off or got rid of everyone who might reveal her identity and separate her from Emmeline, and then killed Adeline to take her identity.  They could all be true, because most of what we know is what we’re told by Vida Winter, who is well-known for her lies.  And of course this book appealed to the booklover in me.  I wish Setterfield wrote more books since I think this is a great debut novel with plenty of room to grow and develop.  More modern gothic novels please! 

Where to find The Thirteenth Tale?
Borders (I'll stop with the Borders links soon since they're getting liquidated :( - end of an era)
Go to your local book store or library!

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