Margaret sits and listens patiently for weeks while the story is told, but she’s not allowed to ask questions. Soon she is enrapt by Miss Winter’s story and even grows fond of her subject. Miss Winters promises to tell her the truth this time. Margaret is skeptical, and almost dismisses Miss Winter’s request because she refuses to fall for more lies, but something compels her to take on the task, an intangible connection with the author.

Vida is well-known for her lies about her own life, growing up at the Angelfield estate, preferring privacy over prying ears and flappy mouths. The main character, Margaret, is asked to complete a biography of a famous and dying author, Vida Winter. The Thirteenth Tale is a story within a story. But where my chair was red, hers was grey and where my chair stood on an Indian rug, surrounded by light-gold walls, her chair hovered spectrally in an undefined, endless plane of darkness in which vague forms, like waves, seemed to shift and breathe.” Her world was not unlike my own: the pale outline of a desk the other side of the glass, and further back a deeply buttoned armchair placed inside the circle of light cast by a standard lamp. “The window was a large expanse of dark glass and in the centre of it, my ghost, darkly transparent, was staring in at me. I highlighted so many gorgeous passages it was hard to choose which ones to add here! Setterfield’s lyrical diction is woven throughout the entire story and there were so many atmospheric scenes described so eloquently that it left me breathless. The writing is beautiful! It’s captivating, it’s compelling, it’s descriptive. I’ve since seen a host of others recommend it, so two days ago, I finally set out to read it. I’d not yet read it, but I added it to my ever-growing TBR. Where do I start? This gothic novel was recommended to me in mid-spring by an agent who loved it and who currently has the full MS for my first gothic suspense.

The thirteenth tale