Margaret Lea’s life has revolved around books for as long as she can remember, but her favorite stories have long been biographies. She devoured memoirs and diaries and adored bringing someone history overlooked back to life with her own collection and study of their work. It was this hobby and passion of hers that brought her to the attention of Vida Winter, an eccentric literary genius and the most celebrated writer in Britain. Margaret is shocked when Ms Winter requests that Margaret become her biographer—not only has Margaret never read Ms Winter’s books (her interest had never been in contemporary literature), but Ms Winter is notorious for creating thrilling lies for anyone who asks about her past and Margaret is only interested in the truth. However, despite her doubts, Margaret agrees to hear Ms Winter’s tale on the promise that it would be entirely true and the two women begin to rediscover secrets that have been buried for decades.

Diane Setterfield weaves a tale reminiscent of classic gothic ghost stories with the horrors, joys, sorrows, and celebrations of two families—one dysfunctional and one demented. As the truth about Vida Winter’s childhood is revealed, so is the secret Margaret’s family has been hiding—the tragic death of the twin sister she never knew she had—and they both realize that the pain of a story is only released with its telling.

Each character that inhabits The Thirteenth Tale is vivid and unique and tied together by a love of the written word that infiltrates every page. Near the beginning of the book, Margaret explains her love of books like this:

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”

A fascinatingly eerie novel, The Thirteenth Tale is not only for book lovers, but story lovers, those who love a tale—the more fantastic the better—and don’t even care about how much of it is true.

Erica’s Rating: 4/5