Seasonal Plume

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield’s evocative novel on the connection and bond between siblings, revolves around two sets of twins: Margaret Lea and her deceased twin Moira, and tragedy-born twins Emmeline and Adeline March. The story is two-fold, one story in another story: you have Margaret while she goes about her task to write the life story of reclusive, mysterious author Vida Winter… and then you have Vida Winter narrating her story; Vida, the successful writer who’s never told the truth about who she is and where she came from. She’s finally coming clean.

I will admit that I picked up this novel purely on reading that it was a “spellbinding, lyrical debut” as I’ve always been drawn to rather lyrical, lush stories–and always felt disconnected with rather terse ones. I raved about it some time ago when I started reading it, and I’ve since finished it. It was definitely a good read.

There are three things that I want to highlight about this book, which might very well be the deciding point if this book interests you:

1. I’m usually a quick reader, always wanting to devour each book. But with this book (along with a few others) was worded so wonderfully that I took my time, savoring each word, each phrase. I’m not one for something overly drawn out, because that makes me read even quicker, skip some phrases. Setterfield hit a good balance between lush prose and story speed, which is important. Something too lush will drown me; something too terse isn’t personal to me.
2. The story revolved around family, bonds, and love. There’s a lot of tragedy, and a lot of abandonment, with dysfunctional people and people who think they know better. But they all served to highlight the (often almost otherworldly) connections between siblings, between twins, to be precise. There wasn’t an extraneous story, a useless thread: I was easily sucked into the story, my full concentration on it.
3. Vida Winter’s past is a mystery, and because of that, the book itself is a big mystery that keeps one guessing. And guessing. And guessing. It’s so finely weaved together that once you reach the end of Vida’s personal story (“…my story–my own personal story–ended before my writing began. Storytelling has only ever been a way of filling in the time since everything finished.”) you might say, as I did, “why didn’t I see that before?”

Other things that was of interest in me is that there are two writers in this book. Novels about writers are quite interesting for me; now I have two: one a biographer and another a fiction writer. Love of reading and Jane Eyre was another. That’s not to say that the book is perfect: precious few are. The final ending of the book felt a bit too drawn-out, a little contrived: there was such a lot of wrapping up to do that it seemed there were endless epilogues. It was not a slow landing, but one that happened in rather swift gradations.

All in all, though, it was definitely a good book, one of those that I can easily call an escape into another world, another time, another place. One that transforms, and one that speaks of more than just the surface.

I finished Janet Fitch’s Paint It Black just a few minutes ago: a darkly beautiful, haunting tale about model/actress Josie Tyrell and living through the tragedy that is her boyfriend’s suicide. Dealing with questions such as, do we really kill that which we love? and whose fault is it, really?, Paint It Black is a glimpse into the soul of one who has gone through love and loss and is struggling to find the way back.

I had my misgivings about the book: I loved Fitch’s White Oleander and while I had high hopes for this book, I was worried about expecting too much. I’m happy to say it didn’t disappoint, but I did approach with caution. Fitch’s lyrical style works best with the first person perspective of her first novel, but it still lent a haunting, heavy tone to Paint It Black which suited the book. It both drew you closer than a run-of-the-mill third person perspective could, but also kept you at a distance, the same distance that Josie wraps around herself and fuels the mysterious air around her (like her movie character Elena, “mysterious and haunted”).

The book delves into the mind and emotions of not just Josie, but the grief-stricken mother, Meredith, domineering and always striving for perfection before her son’s death tears apart her quasi-perfect world. It explores into the emotions going through Michael, when he was alive and seemingly destroying the very thing he stormed the Bastille for.

“To be or not to be… It’s the only question, really. Zero or one. Accept or reject.”

But that was the thing about zero. Its weakness. Even if zero had taken over the entire universe, the biggest fascist of all, one tiny gesture could deny it. One footprint, one atom. You didn’t have to be a genius. You didn’t even have to know that was what you were doing. You made a mark. You changed something. And changed zero to one.

It’s a depressing tale (I cried I don’t know how many times), hanging heavy and clawing right at your heart. Fitch has a way with words, a way of making you think without throwing everything at you, of creating both a bridge and a wall between you and grieving Josie, grasping Meredith, and troubled Michael. The book is like a black painting, seemingly dark and heavy, but if you look closer, let yourself see, there’s this silvery white paint shining from underneath: the True World, its beauty never entirely gone, if we only know where and how to look.