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Loading... The Thirteenth Taleby Diane Setterfield
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. The truth is, I've been fascinated with twins ever since Mary Ann and Kathy Ruane joined my kindergarten class lo those many years ago. They looked exactly alike! but they were not the same person! WTF? Even MORE fascinating to me are twins who were separated before their memories are functional, but who live with a constant sense of loss. That's the underlying theme of this very well-written book, so it should have been right up my alley. In a way, it was: I read it all in one sitting (it was a trans-Atlantic flight, and my movie-viewer thingy was broken, which concentrates the mind wonderfully) and actually enjoyed it quite a lot. The book opens with a rather lost female writer being called to the home of a famously reclusive author, who, for some unknown reason, has decided to give her an exclusive - and possibly even truthful - interview. The reason, it soon becomes clear, is that both women share a devastating loss - but the nature of their losses is not clear, even to them. Pretty interesting, huh? So why only three stars? Because the denouement was stupid. Not to be harsh or anything, but the book was darn good: why couldn't Satterfield have come up with a cooler and more satisfying ending? I YEARN to give a book five stars! Help me, Universe!(less) A thrilling book. A wonderful read. It is real page turner but not your typical page turner. Its a story about stories plus lots more. Its part mystery, part a celebration of literature. I loved it and highly recommend it. This is a great story for people who love books - it unfolds slowly and delicately, but still packs a punch once the truth is finally revealed. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0743298020, Hardcover)Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts." The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told. --Valerie Ryan (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:13 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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It is written within the Gothic tradition with overly rich writing that is reminiscent of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights (if even includes the burning down of a house!). While the writing and word choice is extremely discriminating and resonates throughout the pages, the characters fall flat and uninteresting. The most interesting characters in the story are only present in the first fourth of the novel. For the rest of the story, the characters are stereotypical and the plot turns can be seen a hundred pages away. While many reviews praised the novel for being reminiscent of the classic Gothic tales, I found that the book had more or less stolen the Gothic elements from other tales and had not developed them into the author's own story or craft.
In regards to the audiobook, I found the narrators to be exceptional. Though the story was dull and quickly became boring, it was the narrators who kept me listening. Their voices were enchanting and their reading of the story added more to the book than the actual text. However, not even the narrators could save me from the disappointment I felt when I reached the cliched ending. Overall, if you love Gothic fiction, you may be interested to read this book for the language and the allusions to Gothic classics. Yet, if you are looking for something comparable to Jane Eyre or other captivating classics, you have more luck just rereading the classics. (