Discovering The Thirteenth Tale

After finding the ABE article about books exploring the theme of twins, I became intrigued, and realized I had one of the titles in my TBR pile. It had been there quite awhile. I think because every time I’d pick it up I’d veto reading it at that moment on the basis of needing something lighter, or it had to be a mystery, or although sounding interesting from the flap it didn’t call to me. Well it finally called, I answered, started reading, and almost couldn’t stop. I say almost, because I did sleep a couple of hours in there somewhere. The story is outlandish. Convoluted. Dramatic. Grandiose. Gothic. And exciting, riveting, touching, suspenseful. A full meal of a story. As I was reading, I wondered how Diane Setterfield got away with it. Getting away with such a story in these realistic  times. There is nothing ‘real’ about it. One can’t determine the year it takes place, unless I missed it.  The narration switches between the daughter of a bookseller, Margaret Lea, her self once a twin, her alter ego died at birth–(there’s more here than meets the eye) and Vida Winter, famous beloved novelist of modern literature. Modern of what year, unknown. The entire book feels Victorian in setting, characters, landscape. And perhaps Vida Winter’s story was meant to be from such a time–and yet, she’s in her 70s, obviously not near old enough to be from that period, unless the current day is really the 1930s. Or 20s, or 40s. The entire piece is written in a manner which the characters are of another time. The bookstore is a fantasy world for those of us who live for the written word. It’s magical–no money is particularly made, it seems, and yet Margaret and her father seem content and happy, without want. Margaret’s mother is a distant presence–there physically, but not emotionally. Margaret stays to herself, by herself, her companions books and herself. Then comes the letter from famous Vida Winter, asking Margaret to write her biography, a biography no one knows, Ms. Winter has lied to so many inquiries regarding her past, no one is bound to believe anything she would say now. Why Margaret was chosen, how Vida’s life became what it did, is the rest of the tale–sounds simple, but oh so not simple. Complicated from the outset, the story begins with a grieving husband who finally takes an interest in his newborn daughter, and then allows her to rule the world. She grows into a beautiful willful girl, one who taunts her half brother who has a very unnatural attraction to his sister. She elopes, her father is crushed, dies, the brother becomes sexually violent to the female members of the town, of course getting away with everything as he is the son of a wealthy man and now the heir to the Angelfield mansion and money that is attached to it. Isabelle arrives home a few years latter, sans husband, who died from  pneumonia and with two startling red-headed twins in toe. Adaline and Emmeline. And there the tale goes hog wild. The twins are left to raise themselves to all intents and purposes. The housekeeper and gardner try to take them in hand, but the girls were out of their control from the first. Their mother, Isabelle, and Charles, the brother, never bothered with them, never saw them for that matter. They grew up speaking only to each other in some strange twin language. They are joined completely, thoroughly, as if one being. Except, Adeline is a bully, angry, violent. And Emmeline is languid. a follower, passive and plump and pretty. And they continue to grow up, Adaline wreaking horrible havoc, and Emmeline following whatever her twin did.

This is the cold bare facts of the book, but one cannot describe the spell Ms. Setterfield casts upon her reader. I was engrossed, and not a little disturbed. Yes, the story disturbed me. I kept thinking about the characters, situations, long after I’d put the book down. Every detail is burned into the reader’s memory. The mysterious doings at the mansion, the mischief the twins get into, the topiary garden that is the life’s work of John-the dig, the squalor the entire living quarters are reduced to, and the sweeping changes brought about by a governess who unfortunately makes a major mistake, separating the twins, with catastrophic results. And these are just a bit of the story, the whole is much richer, twisting around, surprising, stunning the reader who if like me was blanketed by the details so that the overall situation was not discovered until Ms. Setterfield decided to let the reader see the broad picture.

I keep thinking that had I made up a story like this, I’d have been laughed out of writing class,(if I were a writer)  it’s so overwhelmingly over the top. But the very gothic drama of the tales is what makes the story work, and the gifted ability of Ms. Setterfield to make this world alive and plausible, so plausible, I think if I turn around fast, I’ll catch sight of a twin or two.