The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield, 2006
A reclusive novelist hires a bookish young woman to write her life, and the truth arrives like a ghost.
Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield was a teacher of French literature; The Thirteenth Tale, her debut, became a bestseller by word of mouth.
Feels like identity, memory and serenity.
Writers die; the voice in the book doesn't. Which is the real person?
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. Books by Diane Setterfield
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