The Thirteenth Tale » (WSP Readers Club Guide)

Diane Setterfield became a major celebrity when the manuscript of her first novel, The Thirteenth Tale, inspired a vigorous bidding war among publishers in the U.S. and the U.K. The inaugural selection of the Barnes & Noble Recommends program, this fascinating tale of gothic intrigue heralded the arrival of an exciting new literary talent.

A compelling emotional mystery in the timeless vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, about family secrets and the magic of books and storytelling.

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.

About the Author
Born in Berkshire, England, Diane Setterfield was educated at Theale Green Comprehensive School and Bristol University. A former academic, she has taught at various universities in England and in France, specializing in 20th-century French literature, especially the works of André Gide. She has also run her own business teaching French to people intending to move across the Channel. The Thirteenth Tale is her first novel.

The Thirteenth Tale was in part inspired by Setterfield s wish to return to the storytelling richness of the books she treasured in her youth. "I read French literature almost exclusively for more than a decade," she explains, "so when I left academia, I really wanted to go back to the English classics which I loved so much as a teenager. It was very nostalgic for me to write in that sort of style." As she worked on The Thirteenth Tale, Setterfield's talent was spotted by the novelist Jim Crace during a writing course she had enrolled in to advance the prospects of publication.

In her early forties, Diane Setterfield is married and lives in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

Publishers Weekly

Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling-and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.