The Thirteenth Tale



""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.""

- Vida Winter

The Thirteenth Tale is a 2006 novel written by Diane Setterfield. The story is about Margaret Lea, an unassuming young biographer who lives with her bookstore owner father. One day she receives a letter from Vida Winter, one of the most prolific and well loved writers alive. Vida Winter has spent all of her public life inventing various stories about her past, but she's close to death, and has chosen Margaret to write the true story of her youth. Margaret has never read any of her books before, and so initially decides to turn her offer down, but after reading some of Vida Winter's books, reconsiders.

What follows is a story of incest, of child abuse and neglect, of a once rich and prosperous family slowly decaying, and the story of two twin girls: Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret becomes entranced by her tale, but finds that as the story is told the truth about Vida Winter's past becomes more and more shrouded in mystery.

The title comes from the first book that Vida Winter ever published - Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, which only contained twelve stories. The title of subsequent editions of the book was Tales of Change and Desperation, but that didn't stop readers from wanting to know what had happened to that thirteenth tale and what it was about.

This novel contains:


 * Angsty Surviving Twin: Vida Winter . As well, the book's narrator, Margaret Lea.
 * Beauty, Brains, and Brawn:.
 * Beauty Equals Goodness: Averted. Actually, the prettier a character is, the more likely they are to be insane.
 * Big Brother Bully: Charlie. It doesn't work quite the way he planned.
 * Big Fancy House/Old Dark House: Angelfield before and after it falls into decay.
 * Brother-Sister Incest: Isabelle Angelfield (the twin's mother) and her brother, Charlie.
 * Clock King: Hester the governess.
 * Conjoined Twins:
 * Creepy Twins: Adeline and Emmeline.
 * Dark Secret:
 * Different As Night and Day: The twins -- one is totally passive, the other wickedly violent.
 * Disappeared Dad: The twins' father dies sometime around their birth.
 * Don't Split Us Up: Adeline and Emmeline react very badly to being separated.
 * Door Step Baby:  And
 * Dysfunctional Family: The Angelfields, very, very much so.
 * The Ending Changes Everything
 * Famed in Story: Vida Winter.
 * Framing Device: Though the frame is Margaret's story in its own right as she goes through her own discovery and development, the business of writing a biography is mainly to tell the story of Vida's past.
 * Free-Range Children: Emmeline and Adeline go wherever they want to in the village because the Missus and John-the-dig are too busy taking care of a huge house and too old to keep up with them.
 * Gentle Giant: Aurelius Love.
 * Green Eyed Red Head: The Angelfield family.
 * Heroic Bastard:  And
 * Idiot Ball:
 * In the Blood: Madness seems to be a family trait. George, Charlie, Isabelle, and the twins are all off.
 * Insane Equals Violent: Isabelle attacks the doctor's wife.
 * Kids Are Cruel: Emmeline and Adeline have zero empathy for other people and casually destroy things and endanger infants.
 * Love Triangle:
 * Madwoman in The Attic: Both Charlie Angelfield and his father, George, go mad after the death of their loved ones, and enter into a sort of self inflicted imprisonment where they lock themselves in their rooms for extended periods of time. George gets better,
 * Make It Look Like an Accident: John-the-dig appears to have fallen from his ladder.
 * Mama Bear:
 * Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: From the start there is speculation as to whether the father of Isabelle's children is Charlie or her husband.
 * Maybe Ever After:.
 * Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The ghost of Angelfield.
 * Meaningful Name: Both Vida and Winter point to a theme of emptiness and death.
 * Missing Mom: Isabelle's mother died giving birth to her; . Margaret's mom is emotionally absent.
 * Only Known By Their Nickname: John-the-dig's legal name is John Digence, but Vida insists that if you really knew him, you knew that John-the-dig was his real name.
 * Only Sane Man: John-the-dig, especially considering that Missus becomes blind and raving as time goes by. In Margaret's story, Dr. Clifton qualifies.
 * The Ophelia: Isabelle. Highlighted by an incident where she falls into a lake at a picnic.
 * Parental Abandonment: Aurelius was left on a doorstep as a baby.
 * Parental Favoritism: George very much preferred Isabelle over Charlie.
 * Parental Incest: It's implied that George Angelfield at least had a sexual interest in his daughter. Certainly when she ran off, his reaction was more like a spurned lover than a father.
 * Parental Neglect: Charlie was ignored by both his parents. The twins were ignored by Isabelle.
 * Parental Substitute: The twins  were raised by the Missus and John-the-dig.
 * Perspective Flip: On the story within a story.
 * Platonic Life Partners: The Missus and John-the-dig. Vida believes that they'd have been lovers if they'd lived in a different time, but she was older and social conventions got in the way.
 * Promoted to Parent:
 * Reclusive Artist: Vida Winter, very much so. She never allows anyone into her home, and whenever she speaks to reporters, she concocts elaborate lies about her childhood. No one knows anything about her, despite her outselling every book except for the Bible.
 * The Reveal: An epic one, via an Eureka Moment on Margaret's part; specifically,
 * Shout-Out: Both explicitly and implicitly to Jane Eyre.
 * The Spock: Hester Barrow.
 * Story Within a Story: The Angelfield family's decay alongside Margaret's tenuous friendship with Vida Winter.
 * Strong Family Resemblance: The Angelfields' children share red hair and green eyes.
 * Suspiciously Specific Tense: More Suspiciously Specific Pronoun when Vida starts saying I instead of referring to Adeline in the third person.
 * Through His Stomach: Aurelius Love will befriend pretty much anyone by giving them food first. Helps that he's a Supreme Chef.
 * Twincest: Emmeline and Adeline's relationship has very strong incestuous overtones, as does
 * Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Mathilde is said to be incredibly beautiful while George is nothing special, as emphasized by their first child Charlie being something of a potato.
 * Ugly Guys Hot Daughter: Isabelle has her mother's beauty and her father's coloring, making her extraordinarily beautiful.
 * The Unfavorite: Charlie.
 * Unreliable Narrator: Both in and out of universe. Vida has a reputation for lying to people about her life story, so much so that Margaret refuses to work on this project without independently verifiable sources. Also, certain details of Vida's story raise questions for the reader.
 * The Unsolved Mystery: Margaret never figures out how the treasure box was taken safely from the house. Likewise, the true parentage of is left ambiguous (was the father, making Vida ?) and though it's heavily implied that it was  who died in the fire, there is plenty of evidence to support the theory that it was . Furthermore,  never finds out who her mother is.
 * What the Hell, Hero?: As children, Adeline and her twin Emmeline completely destroy John-the-dig's garden, leaving him heartbroken. The Missus too doesn't understand, and demands the girls explain why they did it.
 * When She Smiles: A woman in the village commonly called Merrily is very plain, but she is considered beautiful when she laughs because of the sound.
 * Would Hurt a Child:
 * Write What You Know: The reason Vida Winter picked Margaret to write her biography despite the fact that she's relatively unknown and has only written a couple of articles, is because she "seemed to know something about siblings", namely, twin siblings.
 * You Can't Go Home Again: Vida Winter
 * Write What You Know: The reason Vida Winter picked Margaret to write her biography despite the fact that she's relatively unknown and has only written a couple of articles, is because she "seemed to know something about siblings", namely, twin siblings.
 * You Can't Go Home Again: Vida Winter