The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
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The Thirteenth Tale is Diane Setterfield's gothic novel about Margaret Lea, an amateur biographer summoned by England's most famous and most secretive novelist, Vida Winter, to finally record the true story of her life before she dies. What unfolds is a haunting family saga of the Angelfield estate, involving unsettling twins, madness, fire and long-buried secrets, mirrored by Margaret's own hidden grief. It is a book steeped in the love of books, a mystery that unspools like a ghost story, and a meditation on twins, storytelling and the truths we conceal.
- 1Margaret Lea, who works in her father's antiquarian bookshop, is unexpectedly chosen by the reclusive, ageing author Vida Winter to write her biography.
- 2Vida Winter has told a different false life story to every journalist who ever asked, and now promises Margaret the truth at last.
- 3Winter's tale centres on the decaying Angelfield estate and the strange, wild twin girls Adeline and Emmeline March.
- 4A governess and a doctor attempt to separate and study the twins, whose bond and disturbing behaviour drive the family tragedy.
- 5A devastating fire at Angelfield is central to the mystery, and the true identity of the story's narrator is its buried secret.
- 6Margaret carries her own secret grief, having lost a conjoined twin at birth, which draws her into Winter's story of twins and doubling.
Key ideas
A story about the power of stories
Setterfield saturates the novel with a love of books and storytelling. Vida Winter is a spinner of tales who has hidden behind fiction all her life, and Margaret is a reader who trusts the printed page more than people. The book repeatedly asks what stories conceal and reveal, and whether the truth can ever be fully told.
The gothic family saga
The Angelfield story has all the machinery of classic gothic: a crumbling estate, an isolated family, madness, illicit relationships, a mysterious governess and a catastrophic fire. Setterfield consciously echoes Jane Eyre and the Bronte tradition, building dread through atmosphere and slow revelation rather than shock.
Twins and doubling
The theme of twins runs through every layer. The wild March twins, their eerie inseparability, and the doubling that lies at the heart of the mystery are mirrored by Margaret's own loss of a conjoined twin sister. Setterfield uses twinship to explore identity, incompleteness and the sense of a missing other half.
The unreliable, hidden narrator
Vida Winter's entire life has been a series of invented stories, and the central puzzle of the novel is who is really telling this one. The revelation about the true identity behind the Angelfield narrative recasts everything that came before, in the tradition of the best gothic mysteries where the teller is part of the secret.
Grief and the missing other
Margaret's discovery, as a child, that she had a conjoined twin who died has left her haunted by a phantom absence. Her personal wound is what makes Winter's story of twins resonate so deeply with her, and her own healing is bound up in uncovering the truth. The novel treats grief as a ghost that must be acknowledged.
Atmosphere as substance
Setterfield's real achievement is mood: rain-lashed houses, firelit rooms, an old woman dying amid her secrets. The novel is deliberately old-fashioned, immersing the reader in the pleasures of a long, atmospheric tale told by firelight, and its power comes as much from tone as from plot.
Who is it for?
Readers who love atmospheric gothic mysteries and books that celebrate reading itself will find this a cosy, absorbing pleasure, perfect for a rainy weekend. It suits fans of the Bronte tradition, family secrets and slow-burning revelation. Readers who enjoyed Rebecca, The Woman in White or Jane Eyre will feel the deliberate kinship.
Full summary
Margaret Lea, a quiet young woman who works in her father's antiquarian bookshop and writes the occasional biography, receives a letter from Vida Winter, the most celebrated novelist in England. Winter, old and ill, asks Margaret to become her biographer and to record, at last, the true story of her life.
Winter is notorious for having fed every interviewer a different invented history, guarding her real past ferociously. Margaret, wary but intrigued, agrees on the condition that Winter tell the truth, and travels to the author's isolated home to hear it unfold in nightly instalments.
Winter begins the tale of Angelfield, a grand but decaying country house, and the troubled family that lived there. At its centre are the twin girls Adeline and Emmeline March, wild, half-feral children with an unnervingly close and strange bond, born into a household already marked by damage and secrecy.
As the family's dysfunction deepens, outsiders intervene: a governess and a local doctor attempt to civilise and separate the twins, studying their peculiar connection. Their efforts disturb the fragile equilibrium of Angelfield and set in motion consequences no one can control.
Margaret, transcribing the story, becomes increasingly absorbed and begins her own investigation into the Angelfield history, sensing gaps and evasions in Winter's account. Her research into the estate's records and its ruined remains starts to shadow and complicate the tale she is being told.
Margaret's own history surfaces. She learns, and has long half-known, that she was born a conjoined twin whose sister died, leaving her with a lifelong sense of a missing self. This buried grief makes Winter's story of twins hauntingly personal and binds teller and listener together.
A catastrophic fire at Angelfield emerges as the pivot of the whole mystery. The truth of who survived it, who died, and who is really narrating the story proves to be entirely different from what Margaret, and the reader, first believed.
As Vida Winter approaches death, the final secrets of Angelfield and of Winter's true identity are revealed, reframing everything that came before. Margaret, having helped bring the hidden story into the light, finds a measure of peace with her own loss, and the tale is set down at last as truth rather than fiction.
