Chain Reading

I simply couldn't get interested in this novel. I'm no fan of the sort of gothic, twisted family story that seems appropriate for Faulkner. Sadomasochism, incest, and a sort of mental retardation that I'd simply rather not explore further.

This is quite simply the best book I have ever read. There's just nothing else to say.

This audio adaptation of this book is preformed by Bianca Amato and Jill Tanner. Normally, the performer or reader of the audio makes little difference to me. This is one occasion I feel differently. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for a British accent. The reader made this book come alive. The story engulf me with a range of emotions. It was a great mystery with lively, memorable characters. What more could I ask for?

I really enjoyed this book, the writing style was a little different using the premise of the story being told in bits to a writer to create a memior or biography. Applicable information and research is included by the memior writer to flesh out the story and characters further. The characters and plot kept me interested and i really felt like i got to know the characters as the story unfolded.

A ho-hum read. This unbelievable family story expects the reader to disengage their credulity and capacity for reason. The book never absorbed me. The saccharine ending and oh-so-convenient meetings of characters smack of poor plot development. The central character whose voice is used to tell the story is never developed properly and remains one-dimensional until the end. Do yourself a favour and rather go bath the dog or something.

Honestly, one of the best books I have read, and my favorite book of the year.

Vida Winter, the protagonist of The Thirteenth Tale starts by saying that she wants her story told as stories should be told: with a proper beginning, middle, and end. She has hired a bookseller's daughter (and skilled antiquarian in her own right) named Margaret to record her life story. Although Vida Winter is a famous novelist, Margaret has never read her work, and has herself published only a small monograph on an obscure pair of brothers in 18th century France. So she wonders why Winter has selected her, and is reluctant to take on the task. But Margaret leads a diffident and unsatisfactory life, and after reading several of Winter's novels, decides that she will take on the challenge.

Vida Winter's story is of a highly dysfunctional family, in which parental neglect and innate insanity vie with one another to destroy the lives of every family member and of those few outsiders who come near. The novel is self-consciously based on Gothic romance with frequent mentions of Charlotte Bronte and especially of Jane Eyre. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the novel is a commentary and modern reflection of those novels. The novel takes place in 2 houses, one contemporary, one old and now destroyed, in the moors of northern England. The harsh weather and short winter days of northern England are a backdrop to the dark story that is being told, or played out, within the houses.

Running throughout the novel is the idea of identity, of what it means to be whole, to know one's place in the world, and to be comfortable there. Setterfield explores this primarily by looking at twin-ness : what effect on identity is there by being a twin? What happens when twins are separated?

I don't ordinarily like stories of this sort - I was never able to finish any novel written by any of the Bronte sisters, for example. But I did like this one quite a lot. It was part ghost story, part tragedy, part commentary on what it means to be a reader or a writer. It was actually hard to put down, and had a very satisfactory ending as a kind of bonus.