The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Satterfield book review

The Thirteenth Tale 

By Diane Setterfield 

Rating 4/5 

Genre : Mystery, Gothic, Historical fiction, classics, Biographical fiction. 

This is really good. A very successful and aging author Vida Winter calls for a practically unknown biographer to record her life history..which she hasn't shared with anyone..which if sees the light of the day could startle the world. Sounds familiar? Doesn't it sound very much like the backdrop to The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo? Yes, but that's where the similarity ends. The past of Vida Winter is far less complex/twisting, has an appealing Gothic feel to it and the mystery gets quite unpredictable..it almost goes out of hand. One the downside, I felt the mystery is rather too simplified..although the reader couldn't have been able to predict/figure it, the biographer sure didn't have much of a problem unraveling it..

Vida Winter's past is a mystery. She concocted a different tale to all the interviewers that came knocking at her door looking into her past. They were wild tales and clearly no one believed them. Now that she is nearing death, she wants to make a clear breast of it and so she engages a young woman Margaret to be her biographer. The story tells of an aristocratic family with twins Adelaine and Emmeline who are inseparable. Their mother Isabella gets committed to a mental asylum due to mental instability and her doting brother Charlie becomes a recluse as a result. The rearing of the children falls on the shoulders of the house keeper and gardener and a governess. The kids start growing up..all those taking care of them die off one after the other..leaving them alone in the world. What happened to Adeline who vanished from the face of the earth? Where is Emmeline who is supposed to have burnt in the fire at the house? Is she really dead and more pressing who is Vida Winter if she is neither Adeline nor Emmeline? 

I felt the pain of separation between twins is very powerfully captured. The world of blackness that comes around them until the separation ends is so real..I could feel it in my bones while reading it. Diane Setterfield has proved herself to be a captivating writer through this book..looking forward to any other works of her !!