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Book Reviewed by:Setterfield's erudite first work of fiction has
all the hallmarks of a classic gothic novel, including the
creepy ruined house, long-kept secrets, a madwoman in the attic
and a dabbling of ghosts, Set in present-day England it has
drawn comparisons to novels by the likes of Daphne du Maurier,
Wilkie Collins and Charlotte Bronte. Speaking in an interview
shortly after The Thirteenth Tale was published,
Setterfield says, "I read French literature almost exclusively
for more than a decade, so when I left academia, I really wanted
to go back to the English classics which I loved so much as a
teenager. It was very nostalgic for me to write in that sort of
style."
With short chapters often ending on cliff hangers, a female
protagonist with a knack for cracking codes, and a large cast of
eccentric characters who enter and exit as the plot requires,
the reviewer for The Washington Post feels that The
Thirteenth Tale has more in common with Brown (Dan Brown)
than Bronte, and that the pieces fall into place too easily
"just as we discover where the holes are". The reviewer for
Booklist also references the short chapters, but in a much more
positive light, opining that Setterfield "skillfully keeps the
plot moving by unfurling a new twist in each chapter and leaves
no strand untucked at the surprising and satisfying conclusion.
A wholly original work told in the vein of all the best gothic
classics. Lovers of books about book lovers will be enthralled."
Whatever the reviewers may say (and they are on the whole
extremely positive), the American public embraced the tale with
enthusiasm when it published in hardcover in September 2006,
launching this first novel into the top of the bestseller charts
in its first week on sale! Sales in the UK, where it was
published a few months earlier than in the USA, were much
slower (about 1,000 copies per week), but picked up fast when
buzz started to build on the other side of the Atlantic.
When asked last year about her meteoric success, Setterfield
replied that she was not used to being so busy and that she
missed writing (at the time, her schedule left her no time to
even think about starting another book). She went on to say,
"I'm used to living a really quiet life with lots of space to
think. I'm not used to being so busy and social and meeting all
these people. It's not that I'm anti-social, just that I like my
own company, and I've been living with people who aren't real
for the past few years – I find real people a lot more
demanding."
More about the author: The publisher's bio provides
exactly two lines of information about Diane Setterfield, but
happily BookBrowse has been able to dig up a lot more about one of the USA's newest "it" authors. Diane was born in
Reading and grew up in Theale (both in the county of Berkshire
in the South of England), she attended Theale Green School, and
then Bristol University where she studied French Literature. She
taught in various universities in England and also in France,
where she lived for several years. The Thirteenth Tale
is her first novel but she has had academic works published
previously - about 19th and 20th century French literature, in
particular about the works of André Gide (a French writer, humanist,
and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1947). She is 43, and lives with four cats and her husband,
Peter Whittall, an accountant, in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.
Until the success of The Thirteenth Tale, she ran her own
business teaching French to people planning to move to France.
She left academia in the late '90s - she enjoyed teaching but
hated university politics and after five years was still working
to pay off the loan she had taken out to fund her PhD. She
says, "I gave up my job to write before I knew what I wanted to
write about ... It might seem bold or brave, but really it comes
down to how much you want to do something. If you want to do
something so badly, then you have to take a bold decision."
After leaving academia, she found herself mentally exhausted,
so, she spent her first year as a novelist renovating her house
and giving private French lessons. "I was doing a lot of
physical work, it was enormously good for me to be away from pen
and paper, it enabled me to just wander in my thoughts and let a
different side of my mind take over," she says. "If I hadn't
had the time to do that, I don't think I would have been able to
write the same book I did."
When she finally sat down to start writing she spent the
mornings writing and the afternoons doing "something quiet, to
have some thinking time". Then one day the voice of Miss Winter
came to her and she set about a first draft which was completed
18 months later, but she was unhappy with the result. She says,
"The biographer, Margaret, was very quiet and reserved and she
was very difficult and withdrawn, I could tell she was hiding
something from me, but I couldn't tell what it was. I got very
annoyed with the book and the characters, and didn't do anything
for a year. After that I took a deep breath and sat down with it
again. I couldn't leave it alone – I just felt these characters
deserved to have their stories told."
Eighteen months later, in November 2005, The Thirteenth Tale
was finished and on its way to agents. Following a marathon
10-day auction, she was paid £800,000 (approx $1.6 million) by
her UK publisher, Orion, and a further $1m by Simon & Schuster
in the USA. Rights have already been sold in 31 countries.
For a continuation of this bio, and an extensive interview,
please visit
BookBrowse.
This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in October 2006, and has been updated for the
October 2007 edition.
Click here to go to this issue.
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