In the process, Lea uncovers the truth about Winters’ past, and at the same time acknowledges her own tragic story. The story is told from the point of view of a biographer, Margaret Lea, who has been commanded to listen to and record the story of a famous and reclusive writer, Vida Winter, who is dying. Setterfield manages to create a landscape for her book that is on the one hand bleak and on the other splashed with colours of passion and madness. Jane Eyre, a recurring theme in the book, is referenced often and I have the urge to listen to it again so the mood this book has put me in doesn’t escape me. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart. Rather, it tells of the internal ghosts that haunt us all. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter, and in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.In true Brontë style, The Thirteenth Tale is not a story of the external ghosts that haunt buildings or graveyards. The Thirteenth Tale is a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and we loved as children.
Struck by a curious parallel between their stories, Margaret demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them. Hers is a tale of gothic strangeness, featuring the Angelfield family - including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline - a ghost, a governess, and a devastating fire. Disinterring the life she meant to bury for good, Vida mesmerizes Margaret with the power of her storytelling. Now old and ailing, she summons a biographer to tell the truth about her extraordinary life: Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth remains an ever-present pain. The enigmatic Winter has always kept her violent and tragic past a secret. So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's beloved collection of stories, long famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale.
When Margaret Lea opened the door to the past, what she confronted was her destiny.
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