The Thirteenth Tale – A Well-Written but an Emotionally Unsatisfying Gothic Mystery

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.

British author Diane Setterfield’s debut novel The Thirteenth Tale (published September 2006) has an interesting set-up that would appeal to the book-lovers. Margaret Lea, a woman so besotted with reading that she makes sure she is sitting down, or else would fall over and hurt herself while plunging deep into the story. Margaret works in her father’s humble bookshop near Cambridge. She spends time at the store, meticulously arranging the books, studying worn-out long forgotten volumes, do research in order to write biographies on obscure literary and historical figures, and attends to small number of visitors. When Margaret is not working, she retreats back to her abode above the bookshop, and gets engulfed in the world of words, lighting her reading space with circle of candles. Just when we start to wonder how one could sustain a life-style with such an economically inadequate arrangement, Margaret tells us about her father’s antiquarian book-dealer job. As she says, the bookshop is her father’s slightly expensive indulgence.

These opening passages mesmerizingly guides us deep into the world of a book-lover, her ruminations on the joy of reading, inhaling the smell of old books, her preference of books over people, all such ingrained thought-process a solitude-loving bibliophile could easily relate to. Diane Setterfield perfectly uses this hook to establish her Gothic suspense narration. Despite living the life of a hermit, an outsider reaches Margaret in the form of a letter. The letter is from Miss Vida Winters, a celebrated author whose novels have bewitched readers across the world for decades. Unfortunately, Margaret hasn’t read one of her novels. How could she be a book-lover and not read the book of a renowned contemporary author? Margaret has an answer for that too: she only reads the works of 19^th century works (“There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere”). Nevertheless, Winters’ prose in the letter enamors Margaret so much that she hunts through her father’s treasured collection and starts reading Winters’ debut work; a collection of short stories titled ‘The Thirteen Tales’.

Miss Vida Winters’ personal life and past have always been a mystery to the reporters and her fans. Twenty two biographers have tried to tell the story of Winters’ life but totally failed. Moreover, being a storyteller, Miss Winters herself spins different stories about her past and feeds it to journalists (in one she is aristocrat, in another a poor orphan, and so on). But now in her 70s, Winters has asked Margaret Lea to pen the veritable biography. While Margaret instantly falls in love with the way Miss Winters conjures words like a sorcerer, she wonders why would the famous writer chose her – the obscure biography author – to tell the truth. Nevertheless, Margaret decides to travel and meet-up with Winters as mentioned in the letter. Even before meeting the great writer, Margaret discovers an oddity about her first book.

 Veteran British actress Vanessa Redgrave played Miss Vida Winters and Olivia Colman played Margaret Lea in the TV movie based on the novel

Though titled as ‘Thirteen Tales’, there’s only 12 stories in the book. In the latter, well-publicized editions, the title has been changed to ‘Tales of Change and Desperation’. The stories were profound retelling of classic fairy tales, which Margaret terms it as ‘'brutal, sharp and heartbreaking’. Connoisseurs of Miss Winters’ stories have long speculated that the missing thirteenth tale may contain clue to the writer’s cryptic past. Subsequently, Margaret arrives at the designated Gothic mansion and immerses herself into the mystery of who Vida Winter is. She is irresistibly drawn to the Angelfield house at Yorkshire, home to generations of patricians and where Miss Winter supposedly grown-up with her identical twin sister. And as the tale unfolds, constantly interspersed with Margaret’s thoughts, the Angelfield house’ nasty, chilling secrets slowly comes to light. Furthermore, Margaret’s troubled life and her own family secret she bears like a scar, persistently haunts her.

Diana Setterfield tries to incorporate Victorian themes of sibling relationships, liberation, and identity. The story of Miss Winters contains clear parallels to the classic gothic novels: Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Turn of the Screw, etc. Sudden twists, intriguing mystery, hint of perverse behavior, rambunctious children, and emotionally-broken adults, the novel has all the atmosphere and elements to deftly unravel the threads and provide the answers. Yet something feels amiss in the story-telling; something which keeps us at a distance, rendering the developments in the middle portions either uninteresting or tedious. Although Setterfield teases us with the spectacle of haunting, there’s no eerie, uncomfortable feeling. The initially fascinating premise becomes repetitive in certain areas (especially when it comes to explaining the twin sibling relationship and Margaret’s deep sense of loss).

Setterfield bestows information from different points and even includes a damaged diary towards the end to closely scrutinize Miss Winters’ truth. But for all the information carefully spread throughout the book, the ending seems a bit rushed and the twist remains very thin (irrespective of its credibility). It’s a smart decision to keep us guessing the time period Miss Winters’ tale is set, but Setterfield’s writing somewhat lacks the real Victorian or Edwardian feel, which was elegantly brought out by contemporary writers like Sarah Waters and A.S. Byatt. Nevertheless, the author’s lively prose kept me engrossed, even when I was emotionally detached from the characters. There are quite a few quote-worthy excerpts, championing the pleasure of reading and the power of story-telling. Altogether, The Thirteenth Tale has an interesting premise and it is beautifully written, whilst I wasn’t thoroughly swept up by the gothic atmosphere and dubious character sketches.