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The 11 in 11 Category Challenge : The Thirteenth Tale: Middles (SPOILERS)	8 unread / 8	KindleKapers, February 2011
The 11 in 11 Category Challenge : The Thirteenth Tale: Endings (SPOILERS)	9 unread / 9	VictoriaPL, February 2011
The 11 in 11 Category Challenge : The Thirteenth Tale: Beginnings (SPOILERS)	10 unread / 10	lkernagh, February 2011
The 11 in 11 Category Challenge : The Thirteenth Tale: General Thread	15 unread / 15	lkernagh, February 2011

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English (751) Spanish (7) Italian (5) French (4) Swedish (4) Norwegian (3) German (3) Finnish (3) Catalan (2) Dutch (2) All (1) All (1) All (786)

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Not the best written thing I've ever read, but certainly a page turner (

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Abbey_Harlow | Oct 5, 2017 |

I completely connected to this narrator and got totally sucked in. It was FANTASTIC. (

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lissabeth21 | Oct 3, 2017 |

Dumb! I can't believe I even read it all, but I guess I was hoping it'd get better. It is about a strange family that ends up with a set of orphaned identical twins that are 'cared for' bu a crazy uncle who won't come out of his room and the two live-in help. The house is falling apart and the two girls are not made to go to school. They of course end up with mental problems but you never really find out. The whole story is what a famous aging author tells our novelist. It is connected because the writer was a siamese, conjoined twin at birth but the sister died at separation. There is the underlying theme that the writer is literally missing part of herself.

camplakejewel | Sep 26, 2017 |

Loved this story: creepy, intriguing, mysterious, heartwarming and hard to put down. (

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AJBraithwaite | Aug 14, 2017 |

Margaret Lea, antique book seller and occasional biographer returns, returns to her apartment to she finds a letter. It is from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelists, Vida Winter. She is gravely ill, but finally wants to recount her life story before it is too late (she has given fake biographies/interviews in the past). Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer. As Vida Winter unfolds her story (replete with madness; incest; a pair of twins; a devastating fire; and of course a ghost), she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret grew up in a household of mourning, but she never knew why until the day she opened a box of papers underneath her parent's bed and found the birth and death certificates of a twin sister of whom she never knew. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets. I found this book fascinating, a modern version of a gothic /mystery/ghost novel with great twists and turns. The characters were well done particularly Margaret and Vida. 4 ½ out of 5 stars. (

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marsap | Aug 9, 2017 |

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Showing 1-5 of 751 (next | show all)

▾Published reviews

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thingScore 58

A family saga with Gothic overtones, dark secrets, lost twins, a tragic fire, a missing manuscript and over-obvious nods to Jane Eyre, Rebecca and The Woman in White, it reads like something a creative writing class might write as a committee, for the sole purpose of coming up with a novel that would suit a book group (and tellingly, there are "Reading Group Study Notes" at the back suggesting topics for discussion).

added by Nickelini | editThe Independent, Brandon Robshaw (Nov 27, 2007)

The Thirteenth Tale is not without fault. The gentle giant Aurelius is a stock character, and the ending is perhaps a little too concerned with tying up all loose ends. But it is a remarkable first novel, a book about the joy of books, a riveting multi-layered mystery that twists and turns, and weaves a quite magical spell for most of its length.

added by Nickelini | editThe Independent, Carol Birch (Oct 6, 2006)

"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.

added by Shortride | editThe Washington Post, Margaux Wexberg Sanchez (Sep 26, 2006)

A book that you wake in the middle of the night craving to get back to...Timeless, charming, a pure pleasure to read...The Thirteenth Tale is a book to savor a dozen times.

added by rainpebble | edit~The San Diego Union-Tribune

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (19 possible)

Author name	Role	Type of author	Work?	Status
Setterfield, Diane	Author	primary author	all editions	confirmed
Amato, Bianca	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Hammer, Hege	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Järnebrand, Jan	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Moksunen, Salme	Translator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed
Tanner, Jill	Narrator	secondary author	some editions	confirmed

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

The Thirteenth Tale

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Yorkshire, England, UK

Lea's Antiquarian Booksellers (Store)

Angelfield Estate (House)

London, England, UK

Important events

Related movies

The Thirteenth Tale (2013 ∙ IMDb)

Awards and honors

Quill Award (Debut Author, 2007)

Alex Award (2007)

New York Times bestseller (Fiction, 2006)

Dilys Award nominee (2007)

NPR's Complete Holiday Book Recommendations (2006)

(show all 7 items)

Epigraph

All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won't be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story. -Vida Winter, Tales of Change and Desperation

Dedication

In memory

Ivy Dora and Fred Harold Morris

Corina Ethel and Ambrose Charles Setterfield

First words

It was November.

Quotations

Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes-characters even-caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. - Vida Winter

Tell me the truth.

Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eye over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.

… ten years of marriage is usually enough to cure marital affection …

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Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Mosse, Kate

Howard, Elizabeth Jane

Publisher series

Original language

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Wikipedia in English (1)

The Thirteenth Tale

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth itself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

All children mythologize their birth...

So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself — all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children. Diane Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfied back upon the shore of your everyday life.

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When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.

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