Book Review - The Thirteenth Tale

Disclaimer: Due to an over-stuffing of turkey and other fine Thanksgiving Day treats, and lack of patience with the book title above…I give you the not-so-much Review of The Thirteenth Tale.

 

When you’re a writer, here’s one of the first things they (who are they anyway?) tell you: to be able to hold a reader, your story must have conflict.  Conflict can be psychological or physical, or whatever, but the story must have conflict.  Examples of Conflict: A man who must find a killer, before his wife is killed—physical conflict; a woman who has to find her true love, or she’ll go insane and decide the world isn't worth living anymore—psychological conflict.  And anything and everything in between…this, my friends is conflict.

 

When a story begins and it doesn’t hold my attention from the very beginning, I get extremely bored.  How do I know I get bored?  Easy, I start to fall asleep.  It could be the middle of the day when my energy is at its highest.  If my attention isn’t there, I’ll be out cold in a matter of minutes.  They say your best bet when writing is to have some action in the first chapter to engage the reader, than either backtrack or move forward explaining why that action has happened.  Think about it…if every story started out like real life, where the first chapter has the protagonist getting out of bed, taking a shower, brushing his hair, going to the bathroom, eating breakfast, and then reading the newspaper, the story is going to get stale very quickly because we do that every day.  It better end with him finding a body near the front door before he goes to work, or I’m out.

 

This brings me to the lovely story of “The Thirteenth Tale.”  How did you hear about this one, you ask?  Well, it was recommended on several sites—if you liked “The Shadow of the Wind”, then you’ll love “The Thirteenth Tale.”

 

Story/Thoughts:

Diane Setterfield has written a novel with “Flowery” prose.  I don’t really mind flowery or poetic prose as long as it moves the story forward.  I did say forward, right?  Anyway, the first chapter deals with a woman coming home—she works at a bookstore, which is really the only resemblance of The Shadow of the Wind—and finds an envelope on a step.  But telling you it’s a white envelope with paper inside and her name on the front isn’t enough.  Setterfield rambles for a few pages about handwriting and other memories, and then finally gets back to opening the damn thing.  And this kind of writing goes on, and on, and on…until I couldn’t take it anymore.

 

The big conflict in the book at this point is a great writer, who’s old and weathered by now, wrote a book a long time ago called “Thirteen Tales or something or other” and there was only—shocker: twelve!  Oh no…not twelve, well where the hell is the thirteenth?  We better find that thirteenth tale somewhere, like under the sofa, or way in the back of a closet, or I just can’t go on!

 

I’ll be honest here; this isn’t really a review, because I could not bring myself to finish this novel.  Sorry to all the Diane Setterfield fans out there.  And I know there’s going to be those people who say: “But the ending was unbelievable!”  Well, what if it is the greatest ending ever in the history of stories—does that mean I should have to drudge through 300 pages to find it?  I have precious free time in my life, and I like to spend it enjoying myself.

 

So I gave up somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred pages.  And about 90 of those were spent wondering if the story was finally going to catch my attention.  But it didn’t…and you have to remember one thing:  this doesn’t mean at all that “The Thirteenth Tale” is a bad novel.  Like they (Who’s they again?) say: “To each, his own.”

 

You may love this book, but if your tastes lie on the same side of the fence as me (and reading my other reviews, you’ll get an idea of what I like), than maybe “The Thirteenth Tale” is not for you.  Maybe you should rent it from your local library first, before you go rushing out to buy it.

 

Here’s hoping my next book pick is a little better.  *Raises a glass of milk, and then takes a sip* (Alcohol is bad for your liver people, and you should only drink when you have trustworthy people around you.  God only knows what bad friends will do when you’re passed out.  So drink responsibly; drink with life-long friends…you’ll thank me in the end.)

 

N/A out of 5 stars (gave up after only 100 pages…sad isn’t it?)