The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Nov
'07
Rarely do I read a book that consantly makes me stop to think. There was so much in this book to think about, and I don’t mean by trying to figure out the mysteries on my own before they were revealed in the story.
It would be wrong to start with “this book is about a girl who,” because it is about several girls; in fact, it is about five girls: Two ghosts, twins, and an “amputee,” as she calls herself. She works in an antiquarian bookstore. Margaret is a biographer and shortly after writing an article on two brothers receives a letter from a well-known and well-liked author, Vida Winter, who wishes that Margaret should write her biography. The truth. The truth from someone who has made up her past in so many different ways, but who now wishes to let it all free. She finds herself piecing together not only the story of a ghost and twins, but between herself and her own ghost.
Such truths were translated in the words of this book unconnected to the events in Vida Winter’s life. Those were the instances where I had to stop and think. I couldn’t continue reading, because they held close to me, pulling at my sleeve, begging me to stop and think about what I had just read. In some cases, they were elaborate plotlines coming together, but I started to think about geneaology, and how we are all just “subplots” in our own lives. The beginning doesn’t start with our births, though we often times think of the world in that way; it starts with those before us - mothers, grandmothers, ancestors from times long since passed who started a trade which we now continue today. It doesn’t matter the common thread, only that there is one, and that every family is a book. I am merely a chapter.
I sometimes like to look at the discussion questions in the back of the book, if there are any. I’m disappointed. They are fine, I suppose, but what I really wanted to think about is that all children mythologize their birth. It is a theme that runs through the novel - one of many - but which struck me as the most interesting. Vida Winter says:
I am human. Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up to ourselves, we are little children, and our advent is something that happened an eternity ago, at the beginning of time. We live like latecomers at the theater; we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginning from the shape of later events. How many times have I gone back to the border of memory and peered into the darkness beyond? But it is not only memories that hover on the border. There are all sorts of phantasmagoria that inhabit that realm. The nightmares of a lonely child. Fairy tales appropriated by a mind hungry for story. The fantasies of an imaginative little girl anxious to explain herself the inexplicable. Whatever story I may have discovered on the frontier of forgetting, I do not pretend to myself that it is the truth. (Page 357)
It has made me wonder not only how others mythologize their birth, but how I have in the past. How do I do it now? I’ve heard stories from my family about how I acted when I was younger, but do I create inner fairy tales to go along with these thoughts of my entrance to this world? And for that matter, what kinds of fairy tales do the characters in my stories create for themselves? Or have I created fairy tales for them, things that couldn’t possibly be true but which I’ve decided to write in because they won’t remember it anyway? An interesting concept that provokes much thought.
Aside from this, I’ve been recommending this book since Page 20. It’s very well-written and well-received and it somehow instantly became a favorite. No, not “somehow;” it’s easy to explain that away. The girl works in a bookshop, just as I do, and she finds the same comforts in books as I do (although her tastes lie in 19th century women’s literature, whereas I prefer modern classics). From the beginning, this book felt like home, and at the end, it left a serene uneasiness. I find that books that leave oxymoronic feelings are the most satisfying books to read.
I will read this again to find the connections and see what really happened now that I know the truth. But I think I will need to think about it for quite some time before I can do that.
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