“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

This novel is by turns beautiful and disturbing. The narrative is set as a story-within-a-story as Margaret Lea, the main character, is asked to write the biography of Vida Winter, a bestselling author. Winter is notorious for making up conflicting accounts of her past to interviewers but her life is revealed through her interviews with Margaret, and some detective work Margaret does to ensure that she too, is not falling victim to Winter’s stories.

The book is a nod to the works of writers like the Bronte sisters and Victorian Gothic novels. There is a reclusive family, secrets, a sprawling country estate, twins who are doomed to be driven apart and even a few mad women for good measure (although these ones are not locked up in the attic). As Margaret untangles the truth of Winter’s past, she also makes peace with her own. Despite relying on classic elements of mystery and horror stories, Setterfield’s writing is unique and each piece of the past that is revealed keeps the reader guessing what will come next.

As a mystery novel, The Thirteenth Tale stands on its own but I think it really captured me because it is also a love letter to stories. Setterfield is a beautiful writer and much of the novel revolves around story – how her characters use it to create, reinvent, comfort and deceive:

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”

I have recommended The Thirteenth Tale to a lot of people over the years. There is a kind of terrible beauty to the novel that left me thinking about it long after I had finished it. I hope it can make its way into your “To Read Pile” too.