I watched the widespread publicity for this book with distant interest before it went on sale to the general public, but since I was so immersed in my books-about-books fetish and generally pay no attention to hype, I took no notice of The Thirteenth Tale until this past weekend. I saw the book at the public library and decided to read it, to see if all the rave reviews were solid.

They were Solid, all right, with a Capital S.

I connected with this book in so many ways, mostly because the narrator 1) is as bad a bookworm as myself, 2) she works in a bookshop, and 3) she understood the pull of reading and how it reflects her view of the outside world. To be bookish is to be knowledgable, but quite often someone who spends more time in, say, a library, seems so sheltered from the harsh realities of the world than someone who travels to distant countries for fun. The narrator, Margaret Lea, manages to be bookish and pragmatic at the same time.

She tells the story of Vida Winter, a famous author who in the past made up stories for journalists seeking her life story, and requests that Lea record her true personal history before she dies. Lea gets so caught up in Winter’s tale that her own longing to see her long-dead twin sister is revived as the story unfolds. Eventually Lea and Winter’s pasts intertwine, and Winter’s able to find peace from the tragic history of her family before she passes away.

That’s the short of it, anyway. In order to prevent myself from gushing further, let me tell you what I love about this book: the prose is beautiful and very readable. And as I said before, the narrator loves books, and she conveys as much to the reader:

And as one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead.

While I find the language of novels from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century to be eloquent in their own proper English way, I still find them very difficult to read. A month or so ago I tried to read Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which takes place in the nineteenth century, and couldn’t manage it. The language was too proper, the narrative wandering aimlessly. Thankfully, The Thirteenth Tale isn’t as cluttered.

In terms of genre, other reviewers have categorized this book as a gothic mystery, which means little to me. Yes, it’s dark - the Winter (AKA Angelfield/March) family history is turbulent and filled with immense suffering for all of the family members, Winter included. Yes, there is a mystery to be solved, since Winter refuses to skip ahead in her story, leaving Lea to puzzle through the missing pieces via extensive research and her own history as a twin.

But it’s the setting of Lea’s father’s bookshop, her fondness for reading in her bed at night, and her intimacy with the book world, all the little details like these that had to do with books that I liked best. Mysteries, family history, tragedy, knowledge - these elements are all in books. They are books. And in a very big way, they’re me.

Edited on 11/30/06.