Dare You To Move

Book: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Genre: Gothic / Fiction
Length: 405 pp.
Grade: A+

Amazon Summary: Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures. 

My Thoughts: Every so often, you come across a unique book that picks you up, drops you right into the story, and doesn't let you go until the very last page. The book paints a picture, a beautiful picture of another life, another world, and no matter how hard you try, you can't get it out of your head until you fly through it and, even then, the story reverberates in your ears, not letting go. Every once in a while, you come across a captivating, thought-provoking book, one that seems a cut above the rest.

This book was one of those types.

As the inside flap says, this book was, truly, a love letter to reading and books. But not only that, it was a tribute to "twinness," the bond between two siblings born on the same day, together, and how that bond forms the world around them and how they view both the people around them and each other. It expressed the power of words, the power of twins, the power of books, and it entirely blew me away.

At first, the thing that drew me the most to the story was the way it was written. It's a surprisingly deep book, one that spoke so much truth, even within the first five pages. The style was easy to understand, full of detail and intrigue that kept me guessing until the very last page of the book. This book was told much in the style of The Name of the Wind, with the main character (Vida Winter) telling her story (as well as the stories of her relatives) to biographer Margaret Lea, but it felt so real, a bit more so than The Name of the Wind did. (Not that The Name of the Wind didn't, of course.)

Vida Winter and Margaret are quite similar, but in a way, so entirely different. Vida Winter has spent the last fifty-odd years writing novels, in hopes of getting rid of the past that haunts her, but as Vida Winter's death grows closer, as her illness (she calls it "her wolf") begins to get much more severe, she has time to tell one more story: her story. And so she calls on Margaret Lea, someone who sells books for a living, to record her life story. This brings them on an insane journey, one that involves both discoveries of things lost since passed and of secrets still held in the present. 

From the very first page, this book had me hooked. It combined a love of reading with a fast-paced plot, strong characters, and the feeling that, even though you're paying as much attention as possible to the story, there are some things that you're just missing, and yet you can't put a finger on it. It reads like a love letter to books and, as Diane Setterfield intended, it struck me as being quite similar to Jane Eyre, but only in plot elements—it still managed to be refreshingly unique, even though some elements of the story have been seen elsewhere.

Both Margaret's and Vida's stories intrigued me. The novel is primarily set around Vida's story, from her mother and father's story, to the birth of Emmeline and Adeline, and finally, to the catastrophic event that caused her to change her name, from Adeline to Vida Winter. It is told in a "story-within-a-story" way, focusing on the magical power of words and telling your story for the first time, and the love between twins. Margaret's story weaves in and out of Vida's, leaving me, at least, with the sensation of having read two amazing stories at the same time, which is most definitely a good thing.

All in all, as you can tell, this book was thoroughly fulfilling. I couldn't put it down and now that I'm done with it, I want to read another book by Diane Setterfield. Does anyone have any idea if she's written any more? If not, I'll be content with this one, but Diane Setterfield is most definitely on my list of favorite authors after this book. I'd recommend this book to anyone. Even though my thoughts can't really do this book the justice it deserves, rest be assured that this is absolutely stunning. One of the best books i've read all year, I'd say!

Currently Reading:
The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel

Next Up:
The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle