James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Speke Hall
(April 30) I really enjoyed this and would highly recommend it, particularly to fans of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Woman in White. The author actually blends all the signature elements of those stories into one of her own, adding in a few extra twists, and I think it’s really well done.
For example, there are two narrators, a take on the nested narrators in Wuthering Heights, but, here in The Thirteenth Tale, because of what they’re going through, the narrators blend and merge in a dreamy way and become indistinguishable at times, causing reader double-takes in a very cool fashion.
Most of the characters in The Thirteenth Tale themselves, in fact, are fans of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Woman in White and refer to the books quite often (especially Jane Eyre), so there’s some meta going on as well, to modernize things. In fact, I was a little skeptical about the book for the first 40 or 50 pages -- it’s clearly a book-lover’s book for book-lovers, a concept done to death these days, I think. But The Thirteenth Tale definitely became enchanting and, I’d say, stakes a claim for a life of its own.
The basic mystery itself is absorbing -- Setterfield is good at red herrings, bizarre clues and limited points of view -- and thrillingly creepy at times. Friends who recommended The Thirteenth Tale to me reported staying up till the wee hours to find out how the mystery is resolved and I can see why (although I personally did not pull an all-nighter to finish it).
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My list of the Gothic biggies mentioned in The Thirteenth Tale (spoilers):
Jane Eyre (mentioned by name more than 30 times; lends the following elements: a governess who attempts to deal with a dysfunctional family; mad female hidden in the house; a house fire that brings much to light)
Wuthering Heights (mentioned directly 3 or 4 times; loans the nested narrators; bastard children; children losing one or both parents early; the aura of incest; isolated setting)
The Woman in White (mentioned directly 3 or 4 times; loans the device of a character adopting the identity of a dead person; mistaken identities; twins or near-twins; a ghostly woman who may be mad)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (mentioned directly once; loans (I guess) the dual-personality device and (like all of these) eerie atmosphere)
Middlemarch (mentioned once, as part of a list of books that Margaret is diagnosed as having read, based on her melancholic illness. I’m not sure what plot devices it lends... maybe just the soap-opera atmosphere?)
Sense and Sensibility (mentioned once, again as part of a list of books that Margaret is asked about. It also is soap-opera-y, but possibly loans the specific notion of becoming ill, or even committing suicide, through sorrow.)
The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes (mentioned once, by Dr Clifton, as an antidote to all the melancholy soap-opera books Margaret’s read, and the allusion must be to Holmes’ skill in resolving weird and contradictory facts into a logical narrative, and clearing up all details for that is soon what Margaret does.)
Emma (mentioned once; not sure if there are any specific allusions -- perhaps simply the weirdness of a small-isolated-village culture)
novella by Henry James (The Turn of the Screw) (mentioned once as the "novella by Henry James," which then gets identified as "The Turn of the Screw," and is something Vida Winter was reading during her years as the shadowy presence in the background at Angelfield House; from here comes some of the tone of The Thirteenth Tale; the supernatural; the sinister atmosphere; the unreliable narrator; the governess who attempts to deal with a dysfunctional family)
story of Cinderella (this is the basis for the Thirteenth Tale itself, only turned on its head and Gothicized)
Books mentioned (once each) that I haven’t read:
The Eustace Diamonds
Hard Times
The Castle of Otranto
Lady Audsley’s Secret
The Spectre Bride
Villette
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