The Thirteenth Tale

Earlier this month, Brandy mentioned a book she was reading, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. The first time she mentioned it, after reading her first few words about it, I knew I needed to read it too. I immediately requested the audio book from my library and the paper version from my favorite online book swaps. I was granted both requests fairly quickly, and since the mail would take longer than the trip to the library I started listening to the audio book a few days after hearing about it.

Though this is Setterfield's first book, she is a master storyteller and works magic with words. As a side note, I sometimes think a modern writer's first book is often his best because it, like a new musician's first album, is usually the result of years of refinement. This is no exception. She says it took three years to write, but many more before that to germinate. The book is a Gothic style novel with whispers of homage to Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. It is, in my opinion, one of the few (only as far as I've read) contemporary novels that has the bones of a classic. Compellingly well-developed characters, a moody but alluring setting, an enticing plot, suspense, subtlety, horror, tragedy, love, all of the elements of a great book are present.

Setterfield's commentary in the book on readers and reading was one of the first things that captured my attention. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Setterfield has just described her own writing. Later:

I read old novels. The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings. Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nic e and neatly. Endings like this are to be found more commonly in old novel than new ones, so I read old novels.

So true. Then:

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same.

Finally:

Do you know why my books are so successful?...Largely it is because they have a beginning, a middle and an end. In the right order. Of course, all stories have beginnings, middles and endings; it is having them in the right order that matters. That is why people like my books.

I have always been one to lose myself in a good book. I can forget all sense of time and reality, but with new stories more often than not I can easily put them aside and come back a few days later for a little more. Not this book. Reading this one brought back memories of when I first read the Anne of Green Gables series, Jane Eyre, or Tolkein's books. Long hours of reading, almost impossible to tear myself away.