02 August 2008

7: The Thirteenth Tale

Setterfield Seventh in my series of retrospective book reviews is another from February, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. The full review is here.

"THE THIRTEENTH TALE is a magnificent, beautifully written and involving story, a modern version of a Victorian novel. Vida Winter is the most respected and widely read living writer, now coming to the end of her life. Throughout her career, she's been interviewed many times but has always given different and fantastical stories about her life, so that she's preserved an aura of mystery.

Margaret Lea is a young, repressed woman who lives in a bare room above her father's antiquarian bookshop. All her life she has loved reading, but has never attempted a contemporary novel. She's written a few articles on her non-fiction research, one of them having been published in an academic journal. Out of the blue, Margaret receives a letter in terrible handwriting, which she deciphers as being an invitation from Vida Winter, who wants Margaret to write her biography."

2 Aug 2008 18:35:00 | Book review

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Maxine

Science editor who likes reading crime fiction

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