Distinct voices of writer, her chronicler
A beloved author famous for her secret stories, especially about herself, summons a young reader to hear the truth.
Inquirer Books Editor
The Thirteenth Tale
By Diane Setterfield
Atria. 406 pp. $26
Vida Winter is “England’s best-loved writer… fifty-six books published in fifty-six years… translated into forty-nine languages… nineteen feature films have been based on her novels.”
She is also “as famous for her secrets as for her stories.” For it seems that “for every new book that came out, she summoned a number of journalists to a hotel in Harrogate, where she met them one by one and gave them, separately, what she termed her life story. There must have been dozens of these stories in existence, perhaps hundreds.”
But now Miss Winter has written to Margaret Lea, a young woman who lives in an apartment above her father’s bookshop. She says in her letter that she wants Margaret to come visit. She says she feels the need, finally, to tell the truth about her life.
Margaret has written “a number of short biographical studies of insignificant personages from literary history… biographies of the also-rans: people who lived in the shadow of fame in their own lifetimes and who, since their death, have sunk into profound obscurity.”
Margaret is an avid reader, but has never read any of Vida Winter’s books. This, she says, is because “I read old novels.” And that is because “I prefer proper endings… found more commonly in old novels than new ones.” Once, though, her father had talked to her about Vida Winter. “Now, there’s a living writer who would suit you,” he said.
The night after she receives Miss Winter’s letter, Margaret goes down to a tiny room in the back of her father’s shop and takes back to her apartment “a small hardback, about four inches by six, only fifty or so years old” - Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, Vida Winter’s first book.
She finds herself “snared” from the start:
All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind, and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.
Reading these words, Margaret tells us, “was like falling into water… . The stories were brutal and sharp and heartbreaking. I loved them.” But, upon finishing the 12th tale, she turns the page and discovers - a blank page. There is no 13th tale.
Though Margaret says she “would have liked to stay in my flat forever,” she accepts Miss Winter’s invitation.
By which time the reader is thoroughly engrossed in Diane Setterfield’s debut novel. Fictional narrators tend to be ghostly figures, and Margaret is ghostlier than most, but that may be because Vida Winter remains so incandescently alive, even though she is old and her life is drawing to its close. One of the great things about this book is the ever-so-slight but altogether decisive difference in tone between Margaret’s narrative and Miss Winter’s. When Vida Winter tells a story, it is spellbinding:
… I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. For nearly sixty years, I have eavesdropped with impunity on the lives of people who do not exist. I have peeped shamelessly into hearts and bathroom closets. I have leaned over shoulders to follow the movements of quills as they write love letters, wills and confessions. I have watched as lovers love, murderers murder and children play their make-believe. Prisons and brothels have opened their doors to me; galleons and camel trains have transported me across sea and sand; centuries and continents have fallen away at my bidding. I have spied upon the misdeeds of the mighty and witnessed the nobility of the meek. I have bent so low over sleepers in their beds that they might have felt my breath on their faces. I have seen their dreams.
What she reveals to Margaret is a chronicle of violence and cruelty, madness and incest, heartless abandonment and heartfelt love. Naturally, it enables Margaret to come to know herself better than she ever could have hoped.
Reportedly, this book received a $1 million advance in the United States and an even larger one in Britain. Which doubtless explains why Setterfield no longer teaches French. Whether her book will earn back those advances is anybody’s guess. But one thing is certain: Those who buy and read this complex, compelling and, in the end, deeply moving novel are unlikely to feel they’ve been shortchanged.
Contact books editor Frank Wilson at 215-854-5616 or fwilson@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/frankwilson. Visit his blog at http://booksinq.blogspot.com/.
