{Review}: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Title: The Thirteenth Tale
Author: Diane Setterfield
Genre: Gothic Literature
Publisher:  Atria (September, 2006)
Hardcover: 406 pages
ISBN:9780743298025
Source: Library
Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4/5

Description from Amazon:

Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield's debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father's shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it's the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
"You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone."
She [Vida] shrugged. "It's my profession. I'm a storyteller."
"I am a biographer, I work with facts."
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida's plan. The transformative power of truth informs the lives of both women by story's end, and The Thirteenth Tale is finally and convincingly told.

My Review: 
I am a fan of Gothic stories such as those written by Daphne du Maurier, Robert Goddard and the Brontë sisters. If you share my love of creepy houses, strange families, secrets, ghosts, murder and madness, then this is the book for you. 

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