Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to her apartment
above her father's antiquarian bookshop. On her steps she finds a letter. It is
a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved
novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it
is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to capture her history. The
request takes Margaret by surprise–she doesn’t know the author, nor has she
read any of Miss Winter’s dozens of novels. Late one night while pondering whether to accept the task of recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s rare copy of Miss Winter’s Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale? Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.
As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares with Margaret the dark family secrets that she has long kept hidden as she remembers her days at Angelfield, the now burnt-out estate that was her childhood home. Margaret carefully records Miss Winter’s account and finds herself more and more deeply immersed in the strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the weight of family secrets. As well as the ghosts that haunt them still.
About the Author
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. "I gave up my job to write before I knew what I wanted to write about," she says. "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."
Diane Setterfield was born in Reading and grew up in Theale
(both in Berkshire, in the South of England), she attended Theale Green School,
and then Bristol University where she studied French Literature. She has taught
in various universities in England and France, where she lived for several
years. The Thirteenth Tale is her first novel; her previous
publications have been academic works about 19th and 20th century French
literature, in particular the works of André Gide (a French writer, humanist,
and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947).
She is 42, married to Peter Whittall, an accountant, and lives in Harrogate,
North Yorkshire (the North of England) with their four cats where, until
recently, 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. "I gave up my job to write before I knew what I wanted to write about," she says. "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."
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