The Thirteenth Tale…gothic and brilliant

“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth, but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.”
--Vida Winter in The Thirteenth Tale

I confess that I’m a sucker for a beautiful book cover. Many a time I have browsed the library stacks or bookstore shelves and checked out or purchased a book simply because I loved its cover. The best book I’ve ever read, Possession by A.S. Byatt, was purchased at Black Oak Books in Berkeley only because I couldn’t walk away from that gorgeous cover. This was before they made a movie out of it and put Gwyneth Paltrow on the front.

The Thirteenth Tale has a beautiful cover—a stack of old leather-bound books with beautiful marbling on the sides of their pages. Naturally, that book was going home with me. It was Spring Break, after all, and I’d finally have time to read in large, uninterrupted stretches.

I was hooked in three pages. Seriously, I haven’t read anything this good in a long, long time. The main character, Margaret Lea, works in a rare book shop and writes biographies about dead authors, mainly because she’d rather not talk to people, if she can help it. She receives a letter from Vida Winter, the most popular author of her day. Margaret hasn’t read any of Vida’s books; she doesn’t read modern fiction. However, this letter is so extraordinary that Margaret shuts herself in her room and reads everything by Vida Winter she can get her hands on.

What does Vida Winter want? She wants Margaret to visit. She claims that she has lied in every interview she has ever given. She wants Margaret to write her biography, and she swears to tell Margaret the truth. The truth, at last, for the first time in her life.

Margaret cannot help herself. She is intrigued. She agrees to visit and write Vida Winter’s biography. The tale that Vida Winter tells her is extraordinarily creepy, horrifying, and mesmerizing. You’ll be repulsed and fascinated at the same time. You’ll also be riveted by Vida’s story and its surprises and by Margaret’s own journey of self-discovery as she unravels Vida’s secrets.

This is author Diane Setterfield’s first novel, which was quite a disappointment to me when I raced off to the public library to see if I could get another one of her books. Setterfield is a former professor of French literature. This novel may be a ripping gothic read, but it is also a work of literary art.

Check it out. You won’t be sorry. If you've already read it, we'd love to hear what you thought of it.