Book Reviews

Reviewed by Lynley Capon

The Thirteenth Tale (2006, Atria Books, 499 pages) is a mystery story without fitting snugly into the mystery style. Although the first novel by English author Diane Setterfield, it's actually the 13th tale of a book written by a prolific writer within the fiction itself. In a wonderful way, Setterfield weaves stories within stories to create something well worth reading.

From the opening paragraph, we meet two characters, Margaret Lea and Vida Winter. Margaret, the narrator, arrives home to her father's bookshop, above which she has a flat, to find a letter from Vida.

“...but so I would not come home to darkness he had left on the light over the stairs to the flat. Through the glass in the door it cast a foolscap rectangle of paleness onto the wet pavement, and it was while I was standing in that rectangle, about to turn my key in the door, that I first saw the letter. Another white rectangle, it was on the fifth step from the bottom, where I couldn’t miss it.”

So the mystery begins. Margaret reads the letter which is written so badly that she first thinks it must have been written by a child (or maybe by an invalid). She discovers it's signed by a famous writer, Vida Winter, who tells her of a reporter coming and asking for the truth about herself. She says she told him an “impoverished story” and sent him away, as she did to all probing journalists. Now the call to tell the truth bothers her, and she senses “it is time”.  She invites Margaret to come to see her.

Often helping her father in the shop, Margaret had grown up surrounded by books. Apart from her love of reading, she leads a lonely life with her father as the closest companion.

When Margaret was 10 years old, her parents went out one evening and she convinced them she didn't need to go to the neighbor's to be looked after, but could fend for herself. In her parents' absence, she explored the house, her father's room being separate from her mother's. Under her father's bed she found a box and delved into its contents. To her horror, she saw two birth certificates both dated the day of her birth and realizes that she was a twin. Suddenly she understands the mystery of her mother's mental illness, and the scar on her own body. She had been a Siamese twin, surgically separated at birth to live while her sister died.

Margaret tells us this story before she meets Miss Winter. The mystery of twins gives a key to the whole plot. Having read a biography that Margaret had written of some twin brothers, Miss Winter wants the same person to write her biography.

Before the main characters meet in person, Margaret reads some of Miss Winter's books, including one called Thirteen Tales. Upon finishing the 12th, she realizes there's no 13th in the edition she has. She talks to her father, who is an expert on books, and learns that the book only had 12 stories and was republished as Tales of Change and Desperation. His copy, a rare edition, still has the title Thirteen Tales.

At the interview with Miss Winter, Margaret insists that she can't do the biography: “ ‘I'm a shop assistant. I work in an antiquarian bookshop. I am an amateur biographer. Presumably you have read my work on the Landier brothers?’ Miss Winter replies she has and ‘it’s not much to go on, is it?....’ And then she sets the trap for Margaret which stops her in her tracks. ‘Once upon a time there were twins....’ ”

The story becomes an interwoven tale of Margaret and Miss Winter and of Miss Winter and a twin. Margaret goes to Yorkshire to live with Miss Winter in a big, rambling house with secrets and an amazing garden. Miss Winter is dying of cancer and feels compelled to tell her story. Each day, she and Margaret meet in the library, and Miss Winter tries to tell as much as possible “before the wolf comes", meaning death.

After a few weeks of listening and writing, Margaret goes to Miss Winter's original home, which had been destroyed by a fire that also burned Miss Winter's hand, hence the bad penmanship in the earlier letter. Margaret wants to verify what Miss Winter told her. Roaming in the fire-stricken ruins, she meets a man called Alphonse who has his own strange tale.

Confident in the truth of Miss Winter's story, Margaret returns to continue working. Intrigue after intrigue unfolds. Gradually, the threads form a very satisfying 13th tale", the truth that Winter had avoided telling for so long.

Setterfield's style draws readers in, keen to read more. The story has a time-defying quality. You can't exactly identify its setting within the past century. As a child, Miss Winter saw horse-drawn vehicles, and Margaret travels by train or car, but these are the only markers.

As a debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale represents a spellbinding feat. Readers will hope for more from this author.