![]() The biographer makes her own investigations to verify a possibly unreliable narrative, checking archives, exploring the now ruined Angelfield, making an unusual friendship with its ghost. Then there is Margaret’s own troubled history, her secret which resonates with Winter’s story. No wonder Angelfield is rumoured to be haunted. A house full of secrets, incest, murder, suicide, madness. Winter’s tale is fascinating, but is it true? This unbelievable Gothic yarn of twins growing up in a mansion on the moors in post-war England. Then there are diary entries from another character, Hester Barrow. Vida Winter’s story is told initially in the third person, then in the first, but filtered through Lea’s account. Setterfield’s novel contains stories within stories. But all through her career she has given different accounts of herself in interviews. ![]() Vida Winter, who is dying of cancer, wishes to have the truth of her life told. Lea goes to stay at Winter’s house on the moors, where she negotiates a difficult working relationship with the author, whose own debut was Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, a collection of twelve short stories. A writer, Margaret Lea, is commissioned to interview and write the biography of the reclusive, novelist Vida Winter (her name carries shades of another Gothic tale, Rebecca). Published in 2006, The Thirteenth Talewas Diane Setterfield’s debut novel, a Gothic homage to both Jane Eyre and the art of storytelling. ![]()
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