The Thirteenth Tale (2006) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Miss Margaret Lea: A non-fiction writer of biographical works. Also the daughter of a man who runs a non-profitable book shop of old and antique books.
• Miss Adeline Angelfield: A reclusive novelist who asks Margaret Lea to write her biography before she dies.
• Charles Angelfield: Isabelle's brother, uncle to Emmeline and Adeline March.
• Isabelle Angelfield March: Emmeline and Adeline's mother.
• Adeline March: Twin sister of Emmeline March.
• Emmeline March: Twin sister of Adeline March.
• Miss Hester Barrow: The March twin's governess.
• Aurelius Alphonse Love: Local caterer, foundling.
• John "the Dig": The gardener at Angelfield house.
• Judith: Miss Vida Winter's housekeeper.
• Mrs. Dunne: Housekeeper at Angelfields. The last of the house staff of the Angelfields. Receives assistance from John-the-Dig.
• Mr. Lomax: The Angelfield family's Solicitor. Helps with finances for the family.
• Mrs. Love: Adoptive mother of Aurelius.
• Maurice: Miss Vida Winter's gardener and driver.
• Mrs. H. J. Maudsley: The Angelfield's doctor's wife.
• George Angelfield: Father of Charlie and Isabelle Angelfield, grandfather of the March twins.
• Dr. Clifton: Miss Vida Winter's doctor. Visits regularly due to her illness.
• Roland March: Isabelle's husband
• Tom: Karen's son; Emma's older brother.
• Thomas Ambrose Proctor: Young man who was brought in to help out John the gardener.
• Karen: Local; mother of Tom and Emma
• Mathilde Angelfield: Mother of Charlie and Isabelle; Wife of George. She died during childbirth and left her husband devastated.
• Sybilla: Sister of Roland
• Dr. Maudsley: Angelfield's doctor.
• Shadow: Vida Winter's cat.
• Wilfred Bonner: Add a description of this character.
• Emma: Karen's young, blond daughter; a twin to Tom
• Mr. Digence: John the Dig, third generation gardener to Angelfield estate
• Kitty
• Mary Leigh: A young women living with her husband and baby near Angelfield manor
• Mathilde Monnier: Mother of Charlie and Isabelle; Wife of George. She died during childbirth and left her husband devastated.
• John Digence: The ground's keeper and only father-figure for the twins.
• Miss Emmeline: The passive and kind twin.
• Mr. Griffin
• Fred Jameson
• Mrs. Robb
• Missus: primary house maid to the Angelfield estate, raised the twins and managed the household
• Mrs. H. J. Maudsley: scorned wife of Dr. Maudsley

Quotes edit see section history

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• “Yhden ihmiselämän aikana ei ehdi lukea kaikkia maailman kirjoja, joten johonkin raja on vedettävä.”

  Margaret Lea

• “Kamppailin pitkin päivää sellaista tunnetta vastaan, että maailmaani tihkui joistakin pienistä rakosista häivähdyksiä jostakin aivan toisesta maailmasta. Tiedättekö tunteen, jollainen syntyy silloin kun rupeaa lukemaan uutta kirjaa ennen kuin edellisen ympärille on ehtinyt kehittyä suojaavaa kalvoa? Kun eroaa jostakin kirjasta, jonka ajatusten ja teemojen – ja myös henkilöiden – tuoksu on tarttunut kiinni vaatteisiin, ja kun avaa sitten uuden kirjan, niin aiempi tulee mukaan.”

  Margaret Lea

• “Kaikki lapset luovat syntymästään tarinan. Se on universaali ominaisuus. Tahdotko todella tuntea jonkun ihmisen? Hänen sydämensä, mielensä ja sielunsa? Pyydä häntä kertomaan syntymästään. Et saa kuulla totuutta – vaan tarinan. Eikä mikään kerro niin paljon kuin tarina.”

  Vida Winter

• “Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes–characters even–caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.”

  Margaret (narrator)

• “My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.”

• “Miss Winter restored to me the virginal qualities of the novice reader, and then with her stories she ravished me.”

  Margaret

• “...what better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?”

  Margaret

• “There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic…”

  Margaret

• “Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a know of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.”

  Vida

• “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.”

• “Of course I loved books more than people.”

• “All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won’t be the truth: it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.”

• “I've nothing against people who love truth. Apart from the fact that they make dull companions.”

• “I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”

• “I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time.”

• “All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to closed behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book they are still with you.”

  Margaret

• “I never read without making sure that I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out.”

  Margaret

• “Reading can be dangerous.”

  Margaret

• “I continued my reading, finished tale twelve and turned the page. Blank. I flicked back and forward again. Nothing. There was no thirteenth tale. There was a sudden rush in my head, I felt the sick dizziness of the deep-sea diver come too fast to the surface. Aspects of my room came back into view, one by one... It was morning. I had read the night away. There was no thirteenth tale.”

  Margaret

• “Life is compost.”

  Vida Winter

• “'Miss Lea, it doesn't do to get attached to these secondary characters. It's not their story. They come, they go, and when they go they're gone for good. That's all there is to it.' 'Where did she come from, then?' 'For goodness' sake! She was only a governess! She is irrelevant, I tell you.'”

  Vida and Margaret

• “You are at liberty to say nothing, if that is what you want. But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.”

  Vida Winter

• “Everybody has a story. It's like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can't say you haven't got them. Same goes for stories.”

  Vida Winter

• “My new knowledge blew life into the story. It began to breathe. And as it did so, it began to mend. The jagged edges smoothed themselves. The gaps filled themselves in. The missing parts were regenerated. Puzzles explained themselves, and mysteries were mysteries no longer.”

  Margaret Lea

• “Reading had never let me down before. It had always been the one sure thing.”

  Margaret Lea

• “But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.”

  Margaret Lea

• “A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.”

  Vida Winter

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Yorkshire
• Angelfield House
• Sybilla
• London
• Banbury
• White

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Perambulator: A baby carriage.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Diane Setterfield (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Salme Moksunen (Translator) - Kääntänyt alkuperäisen englanninkielisen tekstin suomeksi.

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Quill Award (2007: Debut Author of the Year)
• Alex Awards (2007)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR6119.E86 T48 2007
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Women's Fiction › Friendship
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Mystery › British Detectives
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S )
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Books & Reading
• Books › Teens › Literature & Fiction › Suspense
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Drama › British & Irish › Contemporary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia
• Google Books
• Reading Group Guides
• Book Rags: Study Guide and Lesson Plans

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