The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield (Summary)

Perhaps the best book I have read in awhile.
Characters (courtesy of wikipedia)

• Margaret Lea: a bookstore owner's daughter, whom Vida Winter asks to write her biography
• Vida Winter: a famous novelist who has eluded reporters as to her true past, and is now ready to reveal her secrets to Margaret
• Isabelle Angelfield: the younger of George Angelfield's two children and the mother of twins Emmeline and Adeline
• Charlie Angelfield: Isabelle's older brother, who harbours an obsessive passion for his sister
• Emmeline March: the less violent, more complacent twin
• Adeline March: the angrier, more aggressive twin
• Aurelius Love: a resident of the Angelfield area who befriends Margaret
• John Digence/"John-the-dig": Angelfield's longtime gardener
• The Missus: Angelfield's aged housekeeper
• Hester Barrow: governess to Adeline and Emmeline
• Dr. Maudsley: the town doctor who attempts to help the twins
• George Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's father, who ignores the former and dotes on the latter after his wife's death
• Mathilde Angelfield: Charlie and Isabelle's mother, who dies giving birth to Isabelle
• Judith: Vida Winter's housekeeper
• Dr. Clifton: Vida Winter's doctor

SPOILER ALERT: Contains summary of book.

Margaret is the adult daughter of the owner of a rare-book store in (London?) sometime near the present. As a young girl she was playing at home (alone for the first time) and discovered a small tin of important documents under her parents' bed, including 2 birth certificates for the same day: one is contains her name, the other is accompanied by a death certificate. Upon discovering that she had a twin, Moira, who died when the two were surgically separated, she begins to understand the incompleteness she has always felt.

Since that time, her relationship with her ailing mother has been strained, and her father is her boss, co-worker, and only friend. When Margaret's birthday rolls around, he always presents her with a store bought cake, a card signed "Love, Dad and Mum," and a few books he has picked up specifically for her at auction throughout the year - all within the bookshop where she both lives and works now. When she was a child, he would whisper "Happy Birthday" to her and play a game or two, while intermittently caring for her mother upstairs who always got one of her "headaches" on this day.

Margaret has begun writing brief biographies of obscure people. At the opening of the book, she is contacted by Vida Winter, the most prolific writer of novels at the time, in the form of a letter. Miss Winter, who has never told an honest story regarding her origins, is now dying and wishes Margaret to write her biography. After a great deal of complications, Margaret agrees. She temporarily moves into Miss Winter's home, and Miss Winter begins to tell her story, from the beginning, in pieces each day as time and her health permits.

Miss Winter begins by describing her family's gothic and mysterious past in their estate - Angelfield. Her grandmother died during childbirth, leaving her grandfather to grieve her with an infant daughter (Isabelle) and son (Charlie) basically orphaned. When he refuses to eat or leave the library, the housekeeper/cook (The Missus) decides to bring Isabel to him. He begins to dote on her unfailingly, and things seem to improve. However, Charlie has a terrible habit of torturing animals, and he soon begins to torture Isabel with her permission.

When their father dies, Isabelle is courted by and marries Mr. March, and they move away. Charlie is furious, and he begins taking advantage of multiple women from around Angelfield. Before long, Isabel returns home with twin baby girls after the death of her husband. She is mentally unsound, and stays at all times in her room, which leaves the twins to be raised by the Missus and John-the-Dig, the gardener. It soon becomes clear the twins are not like most children. They speak only to each other in a made-up twin language, and they create mischief throughout the area by stealing from people's kitchens and gardens. Eventually, they steal a pram with an infant inside because they want to play with it. When the mother turns around to find it missing, the whole neighborhood comes out to find her baby. They find the baby lying in the weeds, and this incident becomes the final straw.

The townspeople approach the doctor and ask him to intervene. He visits the home to assess the situation, and has Isabelle institutionalized. Charlie refuses to leave his room after that.

Dr. Maudsley decides to hire a governess for the girls. When Hester enters the home, she brings order and cleanliness with her. The Missus is quite elderly and unable to keep up with all of the housework since most of the staff has been fired over the years. Hester cleans the entire house, finds the keys to each room and locks those that are unused, and establishes regular meal times.

After a few months there, she consults with the doctor and they decide to separate Emmeline and Adeline. The doctor takes Adeline home with him, and Emmeline stays at Angelfield. Their experiment fails miserably - initially they are both silent, but soon Emmeline begins to improve. As Hester and Dr. Maudsley consult with one another one day, the doctor's wife catches them kissing. Hester leaves Angelfield immediately and the twins are reunited.

Not long after, Isabelle dies in the institution, and Charlie leaves the nursery for the first time and disappears. Vida finds him dead in an overgrown gazebo one day, having shot himself. She, however, keeps this information to herself to avoid having Angelfield taken over again by outsiders.

Soon after this, we discover that Ms. Winters is not one of the twins, but their nameless cousin, illegitimate child of Charlie. Her impoverished mother abandons her at Angelfield, and the househelp take her under their wings. Hester never realized there were 3 girls.

The Missus dies first, and John-the-dig is murdered when someone (Adeline) tampers with the latch on his ladder.

Before his death, John-the-dig hired a neighbor boy to work in the gardens, and this boy and Emmeline fall in love and have a child, although the boy leaves without knowing Emmeline is pregnant. When Emmeline begins to give all of her attention to her son, Adeline becomes jealous and violent, and tries to burn the child in the library fireplace. Vida finds the child and saves him, running him to a neighbor's house and leaving him on the doorstep. She then goes back to the house which is engulfed in flames and drags one of the twins out, believing it is Emmeline. She, however, never finds out which twin it is. The other twin perishes in the blaze.

Throughout the time she is gathering the story, Margaret makes a couple of visits to Angelfield, where she meets Aurelius. Eventually, they discover that Aurelius is Emmeline's son.

This story was filled with plenty of suspense and miraculous style.