I thought
this book would be good before I turned the first page, it just had that
certain something about it; I wasn't wrong.
Diane
Setterfield's, The Thirteenth Tale, is a book about redemption, death, and a
great deception.
A letter,
hand written, by the world renown author, Vida
Winter, summonses little known biographer, Margaret Lea, to take her
deposition, her thirteenth tale. A tale of incest, madness, and feral children,
of a dark family past, and the long kept secrets of her days as a child,
growing up at Angelfield house, a house now lost to nature after fire tore
through it.
The book is spooky in places - when Margaret takes a sneaky look around
the now derelict Angelfield house, she encounters a man living in the squalid
remains, and we feel her heart racing, as she attempts her escape.
As her relationship develops with Vida Winter - who is very ill - there
is an atmosphere and suspense, that I liken to Kate Mosse's Languedoc series,
and Carlos Ruiz Zafon's, Shadow of the Wind trilogy, and is something I
actively seek out in books now.
The novel is told in the first person by both Margaret Lea and Vida
Winter, and Vida isn't the only one who has something to hide!
As Margaret deposes more and more of her notes, and the interviews with
Vida continue, it brings into question things in her past; things that have
remained buried for years, and Diane Setterfield's clever prose, drip feed you
just enough information to keep you intrigued, guessing, and reading to the
end.
Great atmosphere then, well written, absorbing characters and a great
twist. Four and a half well deserved stars.
