Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale
The narrator of this gothic story, Margaret Lea, is the daughter of an antique bookseller who writes biographies of forgotten Victorian personalities as a hobby. One day her peaceful time in the Cambridge shop of her father come to an end, as she accepts the strange request of famous and mysterious writer Vida Winter. Mrs. Winter, thought the most successful author alive, has always spun tales to evade the truth about her childhood, but, now old and sick, she chooses Margaret, whom she doesn’t know personally, to be the receiver of the long-awaited story of her life.
Margaret first hesitates, but discovering one of Vida Winter’s book of short stories (she had never read any of hers before) called Thirteenth Tales of Change and Desperation, she discovers that there are only twelve tales to be read. What is the thirteenth tale and why hasn’t it been published? Her curiosity aroused, Margaret accepts Mrs. Winter’s proposition and goes to her isolated house in the moors.
Days pass and Margaret becomes engulfed in the bizarre tale narrated by Vida Winter, a lunatic and strong-willed woman, who also wants to know what Margaret story is. But Margaret is very protective of her empty life and the early tragedy which was its cause. What she learns from Vida Winter is the story of two strange and wild twins, raised at a place called Angelfield by a couple of caring but aging servants, in a house without rules, with a mother not interested in mothering and a brutal and absent uncle…
The Thirteenth Tale is the typical gothic story, it has all the ingredients: creepy mansions, ghosts, forbidden passions and madness. Diane Setterfield acknowledges her inspirations and references (Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw etc.) and plays with our expectations of readers of nineteenth century Gothic literature. Although The Thirteenth Tale is definitely not "great" literature as many reviewers pretend and added nothing to the genre (it reminded me for instance of a novel I read a couple of years ago, The Ghost Writer by John Harwood), I found it creepy and extremely entertaining. It is also a wonderful tribute to books and reading, and I recognized myself a lot in Diane Setterfield’s descriptions of her narrator’s relationship to books and reading. The Thirteenth Tale also warns about the dangers of being a voracious reader (in the same way Madame Bovary or The Turn of the Screw also do)…
Recommended as a wintertime reading, cuddled up in front of the fireplace…
Rating: 4/5
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Un bon moment de lecture même s’il est vrai qu’il manque un petit quelque chose à ce roman qui ne m’a pas incitée à rester accrochée jusqu’à la dernière page sans pouvoir lâcher le livre. Peut-être justement va-t-il trop loin dans le style gothique, cherchant à tout prix à exploiter toutes les facettes du genre…