THE
THIRTEENTH TALE
by
DIANE
SETTERFIELD
Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten. It was once the imposing home of the March family- fascinating, manipulative Isabelle, Charlie, her brutal and dangerous brother, and the wild, untamed twins, Emmeline and Adeline. But Angelfield House conceals a chilling secret whose impact still resonates...
Now Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield's past- and the mystery of the March family starts to unravel. What has the house been hiding? What is its connection with the enigmatic author Vida Winter? And what is it in Margaret's own troubled past that causes her to fall so powerfully under Angelfield's spell?
THE REALITY:
I first saw this book as a TV adaption, starring Olivia Coleman and Vanessa Regrave, coincidentally exactly ten years before reading this charity shop book (I recognised the title as the TV adaption was compelling, and right up my street). This is a must for fans of spooky houses, atmospheric settings and eccentric characters. In fact, further recommended reading is listed as Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and The Turn of The Screw by Henry James. I've read all but the latter- something I intend to remedy soon- some more than once and have seen several TV adaptions of those fine tales.
The book differs slightly from the TV adaption in that certain things were changed for dramatic screen effect. In the book the housekeeper dies a natural death, and doesn't fall through the roof. In the book Margaret was once a conjoined twin, whom she was separated from at birth, with the twin dying immediately, but on screen Margaret let go of her twin's hand after a row as kids, with the twin getting run over by a car as she ran back towards Margaret. Margaret, of course, suffers immense guilt in both versions, but in the book she only finds out about the existence of her twin by accident, and her mother doesn't seem to be able to get beyond the fact that she's very lucky to have one child alive and healthy. It's a classic case of families lacking the ability to communicate effectively and talk about their issues, and I'm sorry that this kind of thing still goes on nowadays. Incidentally, it's quite ambivalent regarding what era the book is set in, but this doesn't detract from the novel. I'm going to guess with the 1990s for the modern day parts (mobile phones don't feature, and not everybody had one then) which would put the historical time frame as the 1920s/1930s.
Incidentally, it sounds like Margaret and her sister had twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome- that happens to one of my main characters in my novel The Reject's Club. Here is my Amazon link to that novel:-
I
did remember that there were actually (BIG SPOILER ALERT!) three
little girls, with the third person either the cousin of the girls
or- more likely- their half-sister, as Charlie liked to harm and
interfere with his unstable sister, and mother of the twins, Isabelle
(sometimes consensually on both levels). This is the bit I
remembered wrongly- I thought there'd been triplets, not a girl of a
similar age. It's not the first time I've seen dodgy relationships
between brothers and sisters explored- I believe it features in The
Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, and I myself have written a (yet
unpublished) piece with incest as a theme.
An interesting book which looks at sibling relationships, especially those between twins, and there are yet more twists towards the end which draw the reader in. Intelligently written, with some new long words for me to learn (I always like that), this was a great read as I love a good “ghost” story. But my favourite character was Aurelius, a lovely, sunny man with his own overlay of sadness then truth. Read it to see what I mean- you won't be disappointed.
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