The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

Imagine a closed book opened every night, unexplained to the same page, or a child calling for its Mom even though the Mother's children were at school. It was these among several other incidents that made me believe my childhood home was haunted. If I believed this what's to stop me from believe in a ghost story or a tale that begins with Once Upon A Time...

The Thirteenth Tale is part ghost story part fairy tale (Grimm Brother's style). Vida Winter, a famed author renown for her novel The Thirteenth Tale, with the thirteenth tale being omitted. Vida, after numerous interviews has finally decided to unburden herself and write her memoirs with the help of a ghostwriter, Margaret Lea, a freelance amateur biographer who has one thing in common, they are both twins.

Miss Winter's story is a bit strange and enthralling centering on the Angelfield family, once wealthy and well respected and now is slowly whirling into oblivion. Curious things begin to happen at Angelfield all of which are explained away by a ghost, but outside the family unit it is called off to those strange twins Adeline and Emmeline. These two assumptions wave the reader back and forth as to who is responsible for the mother being committed to an asylum, forcing her brother into confinement till his death, or the death of the loyal gardener, or the fire destroying Angelfield estate itself?

The Thirteenth Tale is a dark story with elements of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. An orphaned and unwanted cousin, the slow demise and dwindling number of occupants in the moors, or an unknown lead character who's last name bares a resemblance to a Mrs de Winter. The Thirteenth Tale, is not just for the lover of mystery novels but also those passionate to classic literature that will have any reader mesmerized but the intricate, weaving story.