The Thirteenth Tale was this month's book club selection. A famous, reclusive author, Vida Winter, contacts Margaret Lea with the offer to write her biography. Ms. Winter's most famous work is "Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation" but there are only twelve tales. It was removed from publication and republished without reference to the number of stories. Margaret's father collects rare books and has an extremely rare copy of this book. Margaret reads it and decides to meet with Vida, if for no other reason to inquire about the last, unpublished story.
Vida has told her "life story" to mutiple reporters. However, none of them are true. Every version is vastly different from the last. Margaret is skeptical that she will be told the truth, but is intrigued. Vida hooks her with the fact that there were twins (Margaret herself had a twin that died at birth) begins her life story.
This book was fantastic. It was well written, had a great plot, a couple of subplots, and flowed very well. There were lots of themes in the book that I particularly enjoyed. There were a couple of small twists that I mostly saw coming. There was a fairly substantial twist that I did not. Generally I don't like major twists in books, but this one worked really well and I really liked it.
This was Diane Setterfield's first novel. It was published in 2007. I will have to see if she has written anything since and read it as well.
408 pages
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