Wow. This is definitely the best book I have read so far this year. If you listened to all the hoo-ha about The Historian, then got it and loved it but thought it was 200 pages too long and too much about Dracula, well, you will just go potty over The Thirteenth Tale.
Margaret Lea is a lonely bookseller’s daughter, words her only friend, when a letter arrives from famously reclusive novelist Vida Winter asking Margaret to come and stay for the purpose of writing her biography. Margaret is somewhat curious about this, as Vida is England’s best-loved living author while Margaret is more of an expert on dead ones.
But as there is nothing else going on in her life, she takes the challenge and travels to the ailing Vida’s bedside to extract the queen of fiction’s magnificent true life story. It involves a set of twins, a ghost, a crumbling ruin, a blind housekeeper, a foundling baby, a deadly fire and a slew of astonishing secrets. And that’s not all.
In the process of uncovering Vida’s extraordinary history, Margaret starts to come to terms with her own dark secrets. The book is more than 400 pages long (excellent value for money!) but I knocked it off in a couple of days, rudely reading through mealtimes and continuing late into the night. To tell you any more of the story would ruin the delight of simply unravelling this timeless, marvellous mystery yourself. Buy it, steal it, reserve it at the library. Just get it.
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