Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale opens with a letter from Vida Winter, the greatest living English novelist, asking Margaret Lea -- protagonist, bookseller, and bibliophile -- to write her biography. Margaret has never met Vida; indeed, she has never even read her books. But after several passages of questionable profundity, Margaret accedes to Vida's request.

The Thirteenth Tale suffers from a serious case of presumption: Setterfield insistently suffuses her writing with undeserved meaning. The overall effect is of the storyteller casting random, meaningful glances at the listener. For example, Margaret early on discovers that she has a deceased twin. This discovery causes her considerable anguish, which Setterfield expresses through fraught paragraphs heavy with italicized sentences and several tacky dream sequences. But Margaret's "twinness" ultimately amounts to nothing -- or, at least, nothing that I cared to catch.

Margaret occupies a relatively small portion of The Thirteenth Tale. Most of the book deals instead with Vida, whose implausibly gothic backstory Margaret attempts to unravel. As it turns out, at the heart of Vida's life is a mystery -- but I hardly realized that there was anything mysterious going on until the book's sudden twist was revealed. No surprise, then, that I found the story a bore. (The Prestige did a much better job with a similar concept.)

Copyright © 2009 Steven Wu