Tämä sivusto käyttää evästeitä palvelujen toimittamiseen, toiminnan parantamiseen, analytiikkaan ja (jos et ole kirjautunut sisään) mainostamiseen. Käyttämällä LibraryThingiä ilmaiset, että olet lukenut ja ymmärtänyt käyttöehdot ja yksityisyydensuojakäytännöt. Sivujen ja palveluiden käytön tulee olla näiden ehtojen ja käytäntöjen mukaista.
When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
BookshelfMonstrosity: These novels offer gothic suspense's classic creepy atmosphere, though with somewhat different story-lines. Fingersmith takes place in Victorian England while The Thirteenth Tale is contemporary, but both emphasize books, mysteries about birth and identity, insanity, and grand houses.… (lisätietoja)
Viihdyttävä lukuromaani, jossa viitattauksia vanhoihin klassikoihin viljellään reippaasti. Tarinassa kirjoja rakastava nuori nainen kipuilee itsensä ja erityisesti suhteessa äitiinsä. Nainen, Margret Lean, saa pyynnön kirjoittaa elämäkerran kuuluisasta kirjailijasta, Vida Winter, jonka elämä on tähän asti ollut mysteeri. Margaret matkustaa Winterin luo ja saa kuulla Angelsfieldin suvun tarinan, mukaan lukien kaksotyttöjen Adelinen la Emmelinen tarinan. Margaret päätyy tarinan pauloihin ja siitä löytyy linkityksiä hänen omaan elämäänsä. Nämä Margaretin elämän ja Angelsfieldin suvun tarinan ymppäämiset yhteen eivät olleet onnistuneinta osuutta kirjassa, tuntuivat vähän keinotekoisilta. ( )
Vähitellen avautuvaksi kirjoitettu tarina Vida Winterin elämästä ja hänestä elämäkertaa kirjoittavasta Margaretista on koukuttavaa luettavaa. Historiallisista romaaneista pitävänä lukijana en pitänyt tavasta, jolla tarinan molemmista aikatasoista oli luultavasti tarkoituksella häivytetty aikakausi. Pidin kirjan goottilaisesta tunnelmasta mutta en ole lukenut vanhoja englantilaisia romaaneja niin paljon, että olisin osannut arvostaa Kolmattatoista kertomusta kunnianosoituksena niille. Sisaruus, erityisesti kaksossisaruus mutta myös tavallinen, on tässä kirjassa mystinen side. Minusta oli lohduttavaa miten Margaret kirjan lopussa pystyy antamaan anteeksi äidilleen. ( )
A family saga with Gothic overtones, dark secrets, lost twins, a tragic fire, a missing manuscript and over-obvious nods to Jane Eyre, Rebecca and The Woman in White, it reads like something a creative writing class might write as a committee, for the sole purpose of coming up with a novel that would suit a book group (and tellingly, there are "Reading Group Study Notes" at the back suggesting topics for discussion).
The Thirteenth Tale is not without fault. The gentle giant Aurelius is a stock character, and the ending is perhaps a little too concerned with tying up all loose ends. But it is a remarkable first novel, a book about the joy of books, a riveting multi-layered mystery that twists and turns, and weaves a quite magical spell for most of its length.
"The Thirteenth Tale" keeps us reading for its nimble cadences and atmospheric locales, as well as for its puzzles, the pieces of which, for the most part, fall into place just as we discover where the holes are. And yet, for all its successes -- and perhaps because of them -- on the whole the book feels unadventurous, content to rehash literary formulas rather than reimagine them.
A book that you wake in the middle of the night craving to get back to...Timeless, charming, a pure pleasure to read...The Thirteenth Tale is a book to savor a dozen times.
Kaikki lapset luovat syntymästään tarinan. Se on universaali ominaisuus. Tahdotko todella tuntea jonkun ihmisen? Hänen sydämensä, mielensä ja sielunsa? Pyydä häntä kertomaan syntymästään. Et saa kuulla totuutta - vaan tarinan. Eikä mikään kerro niin paljon kuin tarina. Tarinoita muutoksesta ja epätoivosta, Vida Winter
Omistuskirjoitus
Ivy Dora ja Fred Harold Morrisin sekä Corina Ethel ja Ambrose Charles Setterfieldin muistoksi
Ensimmäiset sanat
Oli marraskuu.
Sitaatit
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta.Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes-characters even-caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. - Vida Winter
Tell me the truth.
Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued Jane Eye over the anonymous stranger with his hand on the lever. Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life. Of course. Unlike Miss Winter, I had been ashamed to say so.
… ten years of marriage is usually enough to cure marital affection …
So they became friends, the way old married couples often do, and enjoyed the tender loyalty that awaits the lucky on the other side of passion, without ever living the passion itself.
. . . she had that laugh, and the sound of it was so beautiful that when you heard it, it was as if your eyes saw her through your ears . . . . It was the sound of joy. He married her for it.
. . . But in her disease was a distillation: The more it reduced her, the more it exposed her essence. Every time I saw her she seemed diminished: thinner, frailer, more transparent, and the weaker she grew, the more the steel at her center was revealed.
. . . when I read about kindly grandmothers in my books, I supply them with her face.
“I know.” He didn’t know, of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. “I know,” he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their language, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
Viimeiset sanat
Se raotti toista tyyntä, vihreää silmäänsä, katseli minua hetken ja ummisti sen taas.
When her health begins failing, the mysterious author Vida Winter decides to let Margaret Lea, a biographer, write the truth about her life, but Margaret needs to verify the facts since Vida has a history of telling outlandish tales.
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Google Books — Ladataan...
The Thirteenth Tale: Middles (SPOILERS)
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