Vida Winter, a best-selling yet reclusive novelist, has created many outlandish life histories for herself, all of them invention. Now old and ailing, at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to biographer Margaret Lea -- a woman with secrets of her own -- is a summons.
Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilfull Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling, but as a biographer she deals in fact, not fiction, and she doesn't trust Vida's account. As she begins her research, two parallel stories unfold, and the tale she uncovers sheds a troubling light on her own life...
Tash - 13nv
Reminiscent of the classic British novels such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, The Thirteenth Tale presents the life of Margaret Lea, a worker in an antique bookstore who is called to the house of famously reclusive author Vida Winter to pen her autobiography. What follows is haunting gothic mystery, focused on the life of the mysterious March family and their connection to Vida. The story switches frequently from the present-day dialogue between Margaret and Vida, to narrated flashbacks of the life of the March family, playing on themes of isolation, death and identity common to both main characters. Every truth revealed raises new questions, and the novel remains captivating until the last of its secrets are revealed.
Guest, 19/08/2014
