Reading the Thirteenth Tale took me back to the storytelling sessions with my grandmother.  My paternal grandmother was a small wiry woman with silver wisps of hair. I used to love cuddling the soft folds and furrows of sagging skin on her face, arms and stomach.  She used to smell of vibhuti (sacred ash) and Ayurveda. There was an open window by her bedside.  Lying on her bed, one could feast on the views the window chose to offer from time to time – rain, starry nights, full moon, pitch darkness, swaying coconut palms, nameless trees in silhouettes, iridescent flowers in full bloom… Cocooned in her warmth and breathing in the myriad smells wafting off her and the window, I used to fall asleep listening to her stories. I have never heard those stories anywhere else.  Only she could have told them, the way she told them – part story, part lullaby.  They are still there, somewhere in the far edges of my memory, - rags swaying in the wind.  Like a small child stretching and jumping to catch hold of them, I try to remember those stories again and again.  But they prefer to stay out of reach.

Thirteenth Tale, as its name suggests, is a tale – a story with a proper ending (discounting the ambiguity regarding the identity of the twin sister who dies in the fire).  The gothic setting makes one nostalgic about Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, The woman in white …(Though, it would definitely be a little over the board to compare Diane Setterfield's style to that of Bronte or Dickens for that matter).  The plot – the incredible history of the Angelfield House - is completely engrossing. On second thoughts, I think ‘magical’ should be the right word. 

 Reading British English is a pleasure.  This one is no exception either. As Setterfield, herself said in an interview, “ This is a very very English book”.  Crisp and succinct, the language does not have any wobbly edges.  Every sentence makes a clean cut.  I had to pause for breath after reading the letter from Vida Winter, the celebrated best selling author to Lea, the reclusive antiquarian book dealer. Like Lea thought, “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.”

The book is a paean to reading in more ways than one.    Love for reading; an obsession with books is scattered across the pages of the book.  Take for instance, “There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere”.; or “ Reading can be dangerous”; or even better, “ ….Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in 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”. Not to forget, this is a very quotable book.  Every few lines down, you are sure to find something to highlight, something to remember for posterity, something to re-read…

“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.”  I am still weaving in an out of the Angelfield House, Lea’s bookshop, the topiary, Ms. Winter’s mansion….and it seems my return is going to take a while.