The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield
Margaret Lea works in her father's antiquarian bookshop where her fascination for the biographies of the long-dead has led her to write them herself. She gets a letter from one of the most famous authors of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, whose popularity as a writer has been in no way diminished by her reclusiveness. Until now, Vida has toyed with journalists who interview her, creating outlandish life histories for herself - all of them invention. Now she is old and ailing, and at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to Margaret is a summons.
Somewhat anxiously, the equally reclusive Margaret travels to Yorkshire to meet her subject - and Vida starts to recount her tale. It is one of gothic strangeness featuring the March family; the fascinating, devious and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline.
Margaret is captivated by the power of Vida's storytelling. But as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction, and she doesn't entirely trust Vida's account. She goes to check up on the family, visiting their old home and piecing together their story in her own way. What she discovers on her journey to the truth is for Margaret a chilling and transforming experience.
In this captivating book, you will find a very enigmatic story that will keep you reading and reading in order to find out what’s going on, what will happen, guess what?? You won’t find a thing, so you will keep reading page after page and chapter by chapter until you end up even more confused. And that is the better part of the book, is so good and absorbing and has such a well constructed plot that is fantastic. It has a lot of suspense, mystery so is actually really hard to guess the twists the story is going to take, but that is the greatest part, to keep wondering throughout the entire book if your theories are right. At the end you will find out of the truth and I can assure you its nothing like you thought it was going to be. But I’m pretty sure you will totally enjoy the whole book.
The plot is awesome and the characters are very well developed, the end is just mind-blowing and the secrets are just the best part. Is hard to believe that this is the first book Diane writes, because she is really good at this writing style.
I think there is not a single part I disliked, not just about the book in general, but in the things that are written, I mean, is about a writer, about books, about stories and storytelling and a booklover, so its easy to feel identified with Margaret.
Highly recommended The Thirteenth Tale is one of the best books I’ve read this year.


















