Have you ever had a book in your possession that you really wanted to read but the time just never seemed quite right? That was the case for me and The Thirteenth Tale, written by Diane Setterfield. A representative from Random House Canada sent it to me sometime in the fall. I had been hearing people mention it for months. I had even mentioned mentioned it here in two different posts - one about the integrity of bloggers and the other when bloggers were cited as the reason that The Thirteenth Tale hit the number one spot on the New York Time best-sellers list. But still the book sat on the shelf. I tried to justify it in my head that I wanted to separate myself from the hype before I read it but the truth is that the timing just never felt quite right. But then last week as I was prepping for a trip that involved many hours on a train I decided the time had come and packed it into my carry-on.

Margaret Lea lives a simple life. She lives in a flat above her father's antiquarian bookstore. She's a biographer although not a proper one according to her because she does it for her own pleasure and writes of "insignificant personages". Usually her subjects are long dead but then one night when she returned home she had a letter waiting for her. It was a letter from Vida Waters, England's most famous author, requesting that Margaret write her biography. Margaret is probably one of the few people who has never read any of her books because Margaret doesn't read contemporary literature.

Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped-for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled; these, in my view, constitute an ending worth the wait. They should come after adventures, perils, dangers and dilemmas, and wind everything up nice and neatly. Ending like this are to be found more commonly in old novels than new ones, so I read old novels.

Margaret reads Ms. Winters books and finds them very much to her liking, with proper endings, and so she does go meet Ms. Winters and she decides to take the job of being her biographer. The Thirteenth Tale is a modern tale of gothic suspense. There are ghosts, haunted houses, twins and of course, secrets. What would a gothic suspense novel be without secrets and mystery?

There are many passages throughout the book about the love of books and stories. Books and reading are a very prominent part of the novel and I suspect that's part of the reason why so many avid readers had such a strong reaction to the story. Did the book live up to all the hype? I don't know. I can honestly say that I enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale. I really was not sure that I would. I don't normally read books that could be described as gothic and I wasn't sure what kind of impact that would have on my reaction to the novel. But The Thirteenth Tale is about lives and stories and the stories of lives. There's a mystery surrounding everything too, which made it a delicious read and I'm not generally a mystery fan.

And if you were wondering, yes The Thirteenth Tale does have a proper ending.

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Photo credit:Random House of Canada's page on The Thirteenth Tale.
Quotation taken from the Bond Street Books 2006 hardcover edition, page 29.
This book was sent to me from a representative of Random House Canada. No payment was received in exchange for this review. The suggested retail price of this book is in accordance with BlogHer Editorial Guidelines.
Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.