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Margaret Lea is a bookish, single woman, still living with her parents in London. As a serious but minor biographer, she is shocked when a letter arrives one day from Vida Winter. A wildly popular author in England, Vida Winter has given many reporters her "life story," not one of them true. She is, above all, a storyteller. Nothing about what she has told people has been true. Even her name has been fabricated. Now she wants Margaret to tell her story. Her life is fast coming to an end and she does not wish to die with her secrets.
Margaret has always preferred to read dead authors. Live ones have never held her interest --- not until now. In her father's antiquarian bookshop, she locates a Vida Winter volume entitled "Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation," which she eagerly devours, to her great surprise. But when Margaret reaches the end of the book, she finds that it contains only twelve tales. What happened to the thirteenth tale?
The book intrigues her enough that she accepts Miss Winter's invitation to a preliminary interview at her home in Yorkshire. But after listening to her offer of an exclusive chance to tell the real story, an unimpressed Margaret declines. The old woman has played too many games and tricked too many people to be taken seriously. Vida Winter has failed to convince Margaret of her sincerity, and she starts to walk out. Only by invoking the magic word "twin" does Vida Winter make her offer irresistible, for Margaret Lea has been troubled by the loss of her twin sister her entire life.
A deal is made: Miss Winter will tell her story in her own way. Margaret will not be allowed to interrupt with questions. Once the ground rules are set, Miss Winter begins the tale of a pair of twins, Emmeline and Adeline Angelfield, growing up in a family of madness. Vida Winter claims her real name is Adeline Angelfield and her twin sister died in a terrible fire many years ago.
Finding Miss Winter's story to be shocking, surreal, sad and totally captivating, Margaret travels to the pitiful ruin of the Angelfield mansion. There she wanders through the old wreck of a house, feeling the ghosts of the people she has been told about. And feeling the eyes of the living watching her.
"A presence. Here. Now. At my side."
With a backdrop of the Yorkshire countryside, the shrouds of fog that creep across the landscape provide an eerie setting for the brushes with the spirits Margaret imagines she has. Or is it her imagination? Drawing out the truth nearly destroys her and she must find a strength deep within herself to go on, for the thirteenth tale is the last and the best of them.
THE THIRTEENTH TALE is a gripping and spellbinding novel with a haunting quality. The story within the story extends beyond mesmerizing in a way that will transfix every reader. Diane Setterfield has a gift of making each beautifully constructed sentence draw her reader deeper into her tale. Hairs will prick the napes of necks when she introduces the girl in the mist, and goosebumps will rise on arms when Margaret meets Aurelius Love. Throughout the story, the three-dimensional sense of emotion literally pulses with Margaret's despair, her elation and her loss.
Read this book for its dazzling turn of a phrase, its wonderful twist on the classic ghost story and the author's stunning ability to move her audience.
--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers
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