Twins. Ghosts. Insanity. Murder. Large English country houses. Odd dreams. Libraries full of books. Numerous references to Jane Eyre

This book has all the ingredients and they’re stirred together well. I recommended it to Eldest Daughter as soon as I finshed it on Thanksgiving, and she stayed up until after 1:00 AM reading it. ‘Nuff said.

However, I’m going to write some more because I can’t resist. I read a book a long time ago about a pair of British twins who were mentally disturbed; I think it was a nonfiction case study, but it may have been fiction. I still remember how very odd the twins were and how one twin controlled the other using nonverbal cues and a secret twin language. The book also told about how the twins were separated and sent to different institutions in hope of improving their mental conditions. I’m really wondering if Ms. Setterfield read that same book or another similar one. I wish I could remember the title.

All that to say, this book is about mentally disturbed twins. It’s also about Story, the stories we live out and the narratives we create to make sense of our lives. The book is about lies and truth, too, and the boundaries that separate the two.

“I will tell you my story, beginning at the beginning, continuing with the middle, and with the end at the end. Everything in its proper place. No cheating. No looking ahead. No questions. No sneaky glances at the last page.”

The narrator doesn’t exactly cheat on this commitment, but Ms. Setterfield, the author behind the narrator, does. The story doesn’t go directly from beginning to end; it comes to a seeming end and then backtracks to tell the same story from a different perspective which changes everything.

“In a single moment, a moment of vertiginous, kaleidoscopic bedazzlement, the story Miss Winter had told me unmade and remade itself, in every event identical, in every detail the same —yet entirely, profoundly different. Like those images that reveal a young bride if you hold the page one way, and an old crone if you hold it the other.”

I said that The Thirteenth Tale contains numerous references to Jane Eyre, and others have compared the book itself to Charlotte Bronte’s works. However, I think it’s much too wild and borderline insane to fit into the essentially staid and conservative Victorian world of the Brontes. In Jane Eyre, the madwoman spends most of her time locked in the attic, only escaping to bring the story to its denouement. In The Thirteenth Tale the insane run free, and the sane are required to hide in attics and closets. Futhermore, in The Thirteenth Tale and in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, the Victorian author I would compare Setterfield to, as madness runs amuck, spreading chaos and mayhem throughout the countryside, it becomes difficult to judge who is sane and who is mad and and who is telling the truth and who is lying and who is simply evil.

For sheer gothic fun and mystery, pick up The Thirteenth Tale. Oh, I almost forgot, if you love words, you’ll enjoy the language and style of this book, too. Note the quotations above, especially the second one. I had to look up “vertiginous”. It means “causing or having to do with vertigo.” What a great word!