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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. A little slow-going at the start, but give this one a chance. I enjoyed the beautiful language and the journey to a most satisfying ending. (  ) deslivres5 | Feb 8, 2010 |  An interesting story of twins and the resulting feelings when one twin is missing or separated. While it bills itself as a ghost story, it didn't feel like much of one to me. It did take me a little while to get into it and to finish it, but I did enjoy it overall. ( ) sunfi | Feb 6, 2010 | Excellent! Thoroughly enjoyable, unpredictable, and satisfying. Feeling rather sleepy this morning because I just couldn't put it down last night, HAD to finish it. (  ) chmessing | Feb 2, 2010 | Loved it. Devoured it actually. Setterfield is an excellent writer/storyteller. Can't wait til her next book. (  ) bridgetmarkwood | Jan 29, 2010 | As a history lover and genealogist/pseudo-librarian, I loved this story about a reclusive fairy-tale writer and her biographer. The mysteries surrounding the writer, her family and home are enthralling. The author provides just the right amount of imagery to allow the reader to envision the surroundings with some of their own imagination. I was, however, disappointed with the tale that gave the book its name (even though the author forewarns that the story is lacking). Ah well, the rest of the book made up for it by far. (  ) missylc | Jan 14, 2010 | 
 "The Thirteenth Tale" keeps us reading for its nimble cadences and atmospheric locales, as well as for its puzzles, the pieces of which, for the most part, fall into place just as we discover where the holes are. And yet, for all its successes -- and perhaps because of them -- on the whole the book feels unadventurous, content to rehash literary formulas rather than reimagine them.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0743564170, Audio CD)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 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:39:25 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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