Tag: throwbackthursday

Throwback Thursday: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m reviewing The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.  Published to critical acclaim in 2006 and described as ‘a love letter to reading’, The Thirteenth Tale was Diane’s first novel.  It spent three weeks at number one in The New York Times hardback fiction list.

The Thirteenth TaleAbout the Book

All children mythologize their birth… So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter’s collection of stories, which are as famous for the mystery of the missing thirteenth tale as they are for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself – all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret. Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain. Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter’s story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized. It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and wilful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida’s storytelling but remains suspicious of the author’s sincerity. She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

Format: ebook (418 pp.)    Publisher: Orion
Published: 8th December 2011 [September 2006] Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Thirteenth Tale on Goodreads

My Review

I was part way through The Thirteenth Tale when I was lucky enough to hear Diane Setterfield speak at this year’s Henley Literary Festival about her approach to writing and, in particular, about her forthcoming book, Once Upon A River. You can read my full review of the event here.  (Oh, and look out for my review of Once Upon A River as part of the blog tour starting in December.)

I was struck by Diane’s thoughts on storytelling as an important theme in her books.  Admitting she’d always had an interest – and not just a professional interest – in storytelling, Diane observed that we all organise information, gossip, and so on into stories about ourselves.  Diane described humans as intrinsically ‘storytelling animals’.  To quote from The Thirteenth Tale, “Everybody has a story.”

The book epitomises that emphasis on storytelling because, not only is its main character, Vida Winter, an author but she is a notably reclusive one who has carefully guarded the true facts of her life, spreading misinformation in its place.  Furthermore, the plot centres on the mystery of a ‘missing’ thirteenth tale from her most famous collection of stories.  What could be more enticing than the prospect of tracking down and reading a missing story?

Having heard Diane’s thoughts made me return to the book with renewed interest and with an increased awareness of the way in which storytelling permeates the book.  Many of the characters are in search of or trying to make sense of the story of their life; others are facing up to the need to finally reveal it.  In some cases, uncovering the true nature of their story does not bring them the clarity or satisfaction they hoped for.  As Aurelius Love observes, “Perhaps it’s better not to have a story at all, rather than have one that keep changing.  I have spent my whole life chasing after my story, and never quite catching it.”

There is also a sense in the book of the story of Vida’s life having an existence of its own; that it is fighting to make itself heard.  At one point she comments: “Silence is not a natural environment for stories.  They need words.  Without them they grow pale, sicken and die.”

I found The Thirteenth Tale an engrossing read; full of atmosphere and with a series of intriguing mysteries at its heart helped by some fine writing. ‘From the day I was born grief was always present.  It settled like dust upon the household.  It covered everything; it invaded us with every breath we took.  It shrouded us in our own separate mysteries.’  The settings have a real sense of the Gothic.  I’m now excited to start reading Once Upon A River very shortly.

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In three words: Suspenseful, Gothic, mystery

Try something similar…The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton (read my spoiler free review here)

Diane SetterfieldAbout the Author

Diane Setterfield’s bestselling novel, The Thirteenth Tale (2006) was published in 38 countries worldwide and has sold more than three million copies. Her second novel, Bellman & Black (2013) was a genre-defying tale of rooks and Victorian retail.  January 2019 sees the publication of her new title, Once Upon a River, which has been called ‘bewitching’ and ‘enchanting’.

Born in Englefield, Berkshire in 1964, Diane spent most of her childhood in the nearby village of Theale.  Diane studied French Literature at the University of Bristol.  She taught English at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie and the Ecole nationale supérieure de Chimie, both in Mulhouse, France, and later lectured in French at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She left academia in the late 1990s to pursue writing.  Diane now lives in Oxford. When not writing she reads widely, and when not actually reading she is usually talking or thinking about reading.

Connect with Diane

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Throwback Thursday: The Dark Tide by Vera Brittain

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ThrowbackThursday

Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme originally created by Renee at It’s Book Talk.  It’s designed as an opportunity to share old favourites as well as books that we’ve finally got around to reading that were published over a year ago.

Today I’m reviewing a book from my Classics Club list – The Dark Tide by Vera Brittain.  You can find my full list here.

The Dark TideAbout the Book

Bright, romantic and vivacious, Daphne Lethbridge is back at Oxford after a period of voluntary work.  The First World War has ravaged Europe, but it has done nothing to daunt her spirit, and she plunges headlong into the whirl of college dinners, debates and romances.  Her enjoyment, though, is soured by her cynical contemporary Virginia Dennison, who spars with Daphne on every occasion. Beneath their surface civility seethes a deep envy.

Daphne seems to triumph over Virginia when she makes a brilliant marriage to a rising political star.  But after they settle in London, she begins to realize the bitter truth of her marriage. It takes a chance encounter with her old enemy for her disillusionment to give way to a mature understanding of a woman’s destiny and a woman’s friendship.

Format: Paperback (260 pp.)    Publisher: Virago Modern Classics
Published: 1999 [1923]              Genre: Fiction

Find The Dark Tide on Goodreads

My Review

Better known for her autobiographical works, in particular Testament of Youth, Vera Brittain also wrote a number of novels.  The Dark Tide was in fact her first novel and, although I hesitate to say so, it shows.  However, you don’t need to take my word for it because the author herself was fairly critical about this first attempt at fiction in her foreword to the reprinted 1935 edition.  Although defending the accuracy of the novel’s depiction of the life of women students in the 1920s, she concedes ‘the crude violence of its methods and unmodified black-and-whiteness of its values’.

As Mark Bostridge, Vera Brittain’s biographer, observes in his introduction to the 1999 edition of The Dark Tide, the book created a minor sensation when first published on account of its portrayal of an Oxford women’s college (a thinly veiled Somerville College).  It also risked causing offence to her friend, Winifred Holtby, caricatured as the character Daphne Lethbridge in the novel.   He describes the characters in The Dark Tide as ‘not so much imaginatively redeveloped as simply transferred direct from fact to fiction’.  One of the key scenes in the book describing a college debate in which Daphne and Virginia cross verbal swords re-enacts an actual event involving Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby during their time at Somerville (described by Brittain in Testament of Youth).

My main issue with the book is that I felt I was being invited to see aspects of Virginia’s character as faults when they seemed to me mostly positive traits.  Conversely, Daphne, whom I felt I was supposed to admire, came across as spiteful, vindictive and envious of Virginia’s achievements and intellect.   My view of Daphne was redeemed to a certain extent by her developing self-awareness at the book progresses but it’s difficult to like a character who displays snobbery such as in the following passage: ‘She flung her books and papers in a heap on the table, and took down her new green coat and skirt from the wardrobe.  It was very expensive, and Daphne loved it – especially as it would make her appear such a contrast to Virginia. Virginia always seemed so fond of black; it was sheer affectation, Daphne thought, to adopt such a sombre style.’

The character I really liked was History Tutor, Miss O’Neill, for her kindliness towards the students.  She came across as perceptive, intelligent and successful but not arrogant about that success; a really positive role model for a woman of that time.    I do thought have to give the author credit for conveying the insular, slightly claustrophobic and at times bitchy atmosphere of an institution where people are thrown together in close proximity and in academic competition.

Towards the end of the book, I began to feel more sympathy for Daphne and the situation in which she finds herself.  However, I still found myself frustrated at her submissiveness and how, for a clearly intelligent woman, she had the wool pulled over her eyes so comprehensively.

The Dark Tide is interesting from the point of view of its place in the evolution of  Vera Brittain’s writing but I believe she definitely wrote better novels and that her non-fiction remains her crowning achievement.  If you feel inclined to explore her fiction, Honourable Estate or Born 1925 may be better places to start.

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Vera BrittainAbout the Author

Vera Mary Brittain (1893 – 1970) grew up in provincial comfort in the north of England.  In 1914 she won an exhibition to Somerville College, Oxford, but a year later abandoned her studies to enlist as a VAD nurse.  She served throughout the war, working in London, Malta and the Front in France.

At the end of the war, with all those closest to her dead, Vera Brittain returned to Oxford.  There she met Winifred Holtby – author of South Riding – and this friendship which was to last until Winifred Holtby’s untimely death in 1935 sustained her in those difficult post-war years.

Vera Brittain was a convinced pacifist, a prolific speaker, lecturer, journalist and writer, devoting much of her energy to the causes of peace and feminism.  She wrote 29 books in all – novels, poetry, biography, autobiography and other non-fiction – but it was Testament of Youth which established her reputation and made her one of the best loved writers of her time.

Vera Brittain married George Catlin in 1925 and had two children.  Her daughter is Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, who is a British politician and academic who represents the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords.