<p>Just bought The Help for $13.49 at Costco, should have noted Mary’s advice about Amazon’s price $10.50- Oh well. </p>
<p>Mary you are right about reading The Thirteenth Tale in a weekend. I did just that- couldn’t put the book down!!! Now, if I can only remember the details.</p>
<p>Kathryn Stockett is the author of The Help. My book group read it in December. It’s a good
read.</p>
<p>SJChessMom, I finished The Thirteenth Tale a couple of weeks ago and just checked it out of the library again because I realized that some of the characters’ names and the various twists and turns of the plot were already slipping away. I can’t decide if that’s due to my age or the nature of the book, but I believe it’s the latter (at least I hope so :)). I think the book lends itself to being read quickly rather than closely, because the reader is in a hurry to solve the mystery. Oops…I hope that wasn’t too much discussion prior to the 15th…More in a few days!</p>
<p>Exactly, the reason I kept the book and didn’t return it to the library.
I know you like to start the discussion on the 15th, but it might be more convenient for people do start on the weekend?
(Especially given the time of year, college students returning, holiday errands ect).</p>
<p>If you have a link to the discussion questions, I would enjoy seeing them, now even if you don’t want to start the discussion- gives me time to go back through the book to refresh my “memory” .</p>
<p>We’re doing The Help in May, so thanks for price hints.</p>
<p>The Elegance of the Hedgehog (M Barberry) and NY, the novel–coming up</p>
<p>Almost finished with The Thirteenth Tale. Desperate to get to the end …</p>
<p>I read The Help over the Thanksgiving weekend and loved it. It was an easy read with an interesting story. Thanks all for the suggestion (and btw, I paid $10 for it through Amazon)!!!</p>
<p>about The Thirteenth Tale Author- who knew, I didnt! </p>
<p>More
Diane Setterfield is one of the most talked-about authors in the world, and as of this writing, her debut novel hasn’t even been released yet! The reason this British academic is causing such a stir is because her haunting gothic mystery, The Thirteenth Tale, was the subject of a high-stakes bidding war on both sides of the pond. After she was discovered by novelist Jim Crace (Genesis; Being Dead) at a writing course on how to get published (!), Setterfield’s book caught the attention of multiple publishers. As the oft-told story goes, the ten-day bidding war the book inspired resulted in it being sold for a staggering 800,000 pounds in the U.K. and $1 million in the U.S. (to Simon & Schuster). Eight translation deals have also been signed, and the book is also expected to be a hot target for filmmakers.</p>
<p>^ Interesting. I didn’t know anything about her.</p>
<p>For SJChessMom and anyone else who wants to look them over: Here’s a link to the discussion questions: [ReadingGroupGuides.com</a> - The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield](<a href=“http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/thirteenth_tale1.asp]ReadingGroupGuides.com”>http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/thirteenth_tale1.asp)</p>
<p>It’s December 15th: Time to take a moment from your bright and cheery Christmas shopping and turn to a murky tale of incest, deception and madness. What fun!</p>
<p>I’m going to start with a fairly mundane question, the last one from the link in the prior post:</p>
<p>“When do you think The Thirteenth Tale takes place? The narrator gives some hints, but never tells the exact date. Which aspects of the book gave you a sense of time, and which seemed timeless? Did the question of time affect your experience with the novel?”</p>
<p>It seemed to me that Margaret lived–perhaps–in the 1930s, and that the story Vida Winter tells occurred about 60 or so years earlier, in the 1870s. Does that seem reasonable or am I way off base? In Margaret’s time, there is no modern technology, but there are cars. A great deal of communication is by letter, and Margaret speaks and writes with a certain formality that seems to be of a bygone era. Young Vida’s story has to take place after Jane Eyre was published, which was 1847.</p>
<p>Why do you think Setterfield keeps the time setting deliberately vague? It definitely increases the aura of mystery and uncertainty, but I wonder if there’s more to it than that.</p>
<p>^^^ Interesting question. There were several times while I was reading that I wondered about when all this was taking place. A couple of times I pictured everything in my mind as being during the 1940s – but there was never any mention of World War II. Interestingly, though, even as I “wondered” about the time, I didn’t feel it detracted from the overall story. Does sort of make it all timeless, I guess.</p>
<p>Not to hijack the first question in the discussion, but did anyone figure things out before it was all explained at the end of the book? I didn’t, at least not entirely.</p>
<p>I also wondered about the time thing but decided it to be the late 1800’s. I didn’t figure out the final plot twist but did think that the twins had changed places.</p>
<p>^^^ seiclan – you mean at the time of the fire? So the bones were those of Emmeline and not Adeline? And, how did Emmeline’s treasure box survive the fire?</p>
<p>Yes CBB, I had not picked up on some of the “clue’s” (and looking back there were many) of there being a third sister. I figured that (until the bones were found anyhow), the fire had mentally altered the girls and their roles changed. Em had gone mad and Adeline had been “scared sane”. I loved the plot twist because I hadn’t seen it coming.</p>
<p>^ So you mean that Emmeline went mad in the sense that she willingly fled back into the fire, despite having been pulled to safety by Vida? Em then died in the fire, and Adeline was the twin who lived. I’m not sure I’d agree that Adeline was “scared sane,” but I would say that she was at least scared into submissiveness–that is, there is no indication that she continued her dangerous, psychopathic behavior after the fire. Maybe because without Emmeline, Adeline couldn’t function, either for good or evil; she was simply “empty.” And Vida’s punishment for attempting to save only Emmeline is that she is saddled with the care of Adeline for the rest of her life.</p>
<p>Wait – is it definite that Adeline is the one who survived, but is going by the name Emmeline? I thought that was a possibility, but sort of left up to the reader to try to decide.</p>
<p>^ lol…I kept saying “Wait” to myself a lot as I was finishing the book, trying to tie all the pieces together. I guess nothing is definite, but my strong sense was that Adeline survived the fire. Then, when Vida was mistakenly called “Adeline” by the hospital staff, she assumed that identity, and let everyone think that the (severely burned) twin was Emmeline. She didn’t have much of a choice: Explaining her existence as a third girl would have been too difficult, and trying to pass as Emmeline would have been hard to pull off, because many of the townspeople were aware that Emmeline was the “simple” one.</p>
<p>Agreed^^^^. That is why Vida/Adeline kept saying "poor Emmeline. She loved her and she died in the fire.</p>
<p>Hm-m-m, maybe I’ll go back and re-read the ending. I probably went too fast, just to finish the book and see what happened!</p>
<p>Hello All, I read this book within two days, during Thanksgiving holiday’s, and am struggling now with the names/ characters and plot. Please help me get this right. </p>
<p>Mary, to answer your initial question about time/ place, the author created such an intrigue story/plot which seemed timeless, but I agree with your estimate of general timeline 1930.</p>
<p>The beauty of the story without the backdrop of time is that it took on qualities of a fairytale, or in this case "The Thirteenth Tale’. The reader was taken on a journey where ghosts and mysterious,convoluted family secrets completely absorbed the reader.</p>
<p>I really ENJOYED this novel. </p>
<p>Just to simplify these confusing characters.
Emeline- evil twin,who died in the fire saving beloved Adeline.
Adeline-chubby, loving twin, burned badly-gave birth to child-</p>
<p>Vida-the third child (but, not triplet ? right) who lived as ghost in house for years, takes on Emeline’s identity (The evil twin). </p>
<p>Remember the doctor being so suspicious when suddenly, evil Emeline, seems to change so dramatically, becoming responsible, caring, mature,and loving. </p>
<p>As the reader, I bought into the idea that the fire, did change her.
I didn’t know there was a third child …until later in the novel.</p>