The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Front cover

I finished reading something very different for me but the photo of the front cover may give you a clue what attracted me when I found this at a book sale.  A novel that must have something to do with books, I was not disappointed.  The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, published in 2006, 406 pages and a very thought provoking Reader's Guide in the Index, for good discussions.   It had been on my To Be Read Shelf, has excellent writing, set in Yorkshire and the moors of England, a tale about life stories, writers, books, twins, ghosts. Some of her phrases, "smooth as a statue on casters", "silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grow pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you." and this seemed off to me, "Politeness. Now there's a poor man's virtue if ever there was one. ...One needs no particular talent to be polite. ...being nice is what's left when you've failed at everything else." And Page 398, near the very end of the novel, "The truth is heavy enough without the additional weight of the world's scrutiny on his shoulders..."

Briefly, Margaret Lea works in her fathers antiquarian bookshop with a fascination for the biographies of the long-dead that lead her to write about them herself. She receives a letter from a famous author of the day, the mysterious Vida Winter, a known recluse.  Miss Winter is elderly, in failing health and finally wants to tell the story of her life, she invites Margaret to travel to her home outside Yorkshire.Here we begin to hear the Gothic tale of the Angelfield family. The book reminds me of the classics Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Each character is prominent and woven through the novel by the writing.    

The opening sentence caught my attention, November is my birth month and so begins this picturesque

Back cover

novel.  "It was November.  Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage  Father had finished for the day, switched off the shop lights and closed the shutters but so I would not come home to darkness he had left on the light over the stairs to the flat.,"  In addition to the quotes above there were so many that I cannot take the time to include all here.  I marked up the book, underlining in pencil so many phrases, so that anyone who buys this may wonder. 

Page 6, ""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?" so writes Ms Winter to Margaret.   Page 8, "There is something about words.  In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.  Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.  Inside you they work their magic."   Page 17, "People disappear when they die.  Their voice, their laughter, 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 ther is an exception to this annihilation.  For in the books they write they continue to exist."    Page 29, "I read old novels.  The reason is simple: I prefer proper endings.  Marriages and deaths, noble sacrifices and miraculous restorations, tragic separations and unhoped for reunions, great falls and dreams fulfilled.  These in my view constitute an ending worth the wait.".    

Because these brutally cold winter days have me staying put in the house, I have time to read.  I am grateful for the habit of reading that came to me very early in life, with being read to and with treasuring my Little Golden Books.  Page 289 has one of my favorite quotes in the novel, "  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."     

Grief  on page 289, "  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 never considered the color of grief, what would it be, grey, dreary, tinged with hues?  Another intersting theme in this novel is the story that everyone has and a reference to a weightless story being one that has never been told, never shared, never put to words.  Weightless stories can be a missing part of a puzzle and cause people to wonder about them all their lives. Such weightless stories  are untold and may be presumed better than a heavy load brought from the  shared details of a told story.  I wonder is it better to know or not often.  

I give this book 5 *****.  I understand the author has another book out and likely I will want to read it too.  

2 More by Lee Child Killing Floor and 61 Hours

Trying to catch up yet again on blog books, but my  stack gets ahead of me as this dreary winter at home in the "tundra" and  too early darkness of MN Winters leaves time to read. 

 Both are excellent Jack Reacher novels, both rate 5 *****, both were in the stack I bought at the La Crescent Friends of Library bookstore on sale.

 Killing Floor, published in 1997,  has Jack Reacher traveling through Georgia, but then he stumbles into a hornets nest, is arrested for murder and decides to stick around and solve what will be his brother's killing.  It opens, "I was arrested in Eno's Diner at 12 o'clock.  I was eating eggs and drinking coffee.  A late breakfast, not lunch.  I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain.  Alll the way from the highway to the edge of town."Page 16 gives good background on the character, Jack Reacher, " ..I was a military kid...show me a list of military bases around the world and that's a list of where I lived...I did high school in two different countries and I did four years up at West Point....I stayed in the army....Military Police......I'm a 38 year old unemployed ex-military policeman getting called a vagrant by smug civilian bastards who wouldn't last five minutes in the world I survived," 

 This book has fascinating information on the world of counterfeiting and money, composition of paper and how electronic money counters work.   

 Page 310 , Military philosophy, staff college taught him to know the war can only be won when, .."seek out their main force and take it on, destroy it."   Page 367, "He had crashed through the barrier.  He had stopped worrying and started relaxing.  He was up on that plateau where you just did whatever needed doing.  I knew that place. I lived there."  419 pages in this  paperback edition.  Page 62 has advice that anyone can apply to problem solving, "Evaluate.  Long experience had taught me to evaluate and assess.  When the unexpected gets dumped on you don't waste time.  Don't figure out how or why it happened.  Don't  recriminate.  Don't figure out whose fault it is.  Don't work out how to avoid the same mistake next time.  All of that you do later.  If you survive.  First of all you evaluate.  Analyze the situation.  Identify the downside.  Assess the upside.  Plan accordingly.  Do all that and you give yourself a better chance of getting through to the other stuff later."

  61 Hours published in 2010 in the paperback edition is set in  frigid South Dakota in a winter storm where the bus Jack Reacher is riding on crashes. He had accepted a ride on a tour bus of senior citizens .   The novel opens, " Five minutes to three in the afternoon.  Exactly 61 hours before it happened.  The lawyer drove in and parked in the empty lot.....Prison was a binary world.  Either you were locked up or you weren't.  They weren't.  He wasn't." 

The prison provides the primary industry and employment for the town of Bolton and  becomes the center awaiting an assassin who will not come from within but from much farther away.  Stuck in a snowstorm Reacher is drawn into working with the local police who are manipulated as it turns from within by the same long distant assassin'.   He volunteers with their shortage of manpower when the prison sirens sound to body guard the key witness in the state's case, Janet Salter a retired professor.    

 

Back cover 61 Hours

Page 41, " Nothing worthwhile was achieved without reflection and rumination.  With reflection and rumination, impulsive mistakes could be avoided and bold strokes could be formulated." .    

The /Shadows We Hide by Allen Eskens

Front cover flap

I take this book personally, the fifth by Allen Eskens, I have read each one, but this was released on my November birthday!  A great present to me from me, I had preordered it on Amazon.  I read it  in November almost right after it arrived, all 339 pages,  and will be passing along my hardcopy to our local library. I think that one would be better off to have read the first novel, "The Life We Bury" to know something about the main character Joe Talbert.  This murder novel/ mystery centers on Joe's curiosity about his father, his namesake whom he has never met.  .  Joe is a successful AP reporter in this novel and still taking care of his brother Jeremy, living in Minneapolis with Lila who is studying for her bar exam and still without contact with his  errant mother.  But circumstances build and  Joe faces a crossroads of life, to give another yet second chance to his mother who  surely wore out her second chances in the last novel.  

The book opens with the lyrical writing that draws the

Back cover flap

reader in to turn page after page, "  I'm lying on the hood of my car, my back reclined against m,y windshield, knees bent, fingers laced together on my stomach and breathing relaxed to ease the throb of pain.  I'd like to say that having the tar beat out of me was the low point of my day, but that would be a lie......I feel like I'm in exile, a nomad of sorts, sharing my night with the stars and the trees and the occasional thistle seed that floats by on  the summer breeze."  He stumbles across a story about the murder of a man Joseph Talbert in a small town in southern MN.  And that sets the  turns and twists.  

Another excellent book by Allen Eskens.  A full 5 stars *****.   Buy it, read it. 

2 novels, The Life We Bury and The Guise of Another both by Allen Eskens

Author Allen Eskens at La Crescent library

This is unusual to combine 2 novels in one post, but in April, Allen Eskens, local MN author, and new to me,  visited La Crescent and  spoke at the library.  It was by far the best talk by an author that  we have enjoyed locally, although I always enjoy meeting authors and learning about them and their writings. This was in the mid afternoon and the crowd was there, packing our small space inside the library, mostly all retired women who mostly had  had read his books previously.  I wondered why retired men do not read, but in our house Jerry prefers to do other activities and has never been the book reader like me.  The week before I was in Sam's Club and noticed "The Life We Bury" which I purchased  because I knew I would be hearing the author soon.  I did not have time to read the book before meeting him, but just out of curiosity I did read the first few pages, and I could not wait to get to it.  I was finishing another book.     Allen talked about his tendencies to daydream finally proving worthwhile as an author, how he was a below average student until he was introduced to drama and acting by an astute teacher.  A Catholic school boy from Nebraska who now lives in MN and had a previous career as a successful criminal defense attorney, he attributes his success to daydreaming, a habit he still has which keeps him taking copious notes about characters as  thoughts run through his mind.  Very interesting and then his success and sense of awe being in the same room with authors like David Baldacci,  etc.  

First novel published 2014

Well I sat there listening to him and thinking, "great just what I need another author whose books I will be buying" and thinking about my over full shelf of books I already have to read, but oh well, as he explained one novel a year is about his limit and how he tries to write about what he knows, how some of his life experiences make their way into the novels, and how he never set out to be an author nor to write a detective crime series but that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th novels just flowed that way featuring the detective Max Rupert, who actually appears at the end of The Life We Bury, his first novel.  What a great novel, and certainly not one I would have ever been  exposed to were it not for this appearance.  We learned that it is currently under consideration for film, aka movie production.  It was amusing when Allen said that once a book rights are sold to a film production company it becomes like selling your used car, you relinquish all rights and decisions to the film company.  His analogy of seeing your former car come down the street with painted fins and teeth was humorous as were several of his revelations about going to New York as a recognized author and meeting authors of renown, James Patterson, etc or merely being in the same room.  

Back cover, 300 pages paperback

Well, I knew I would want to read more than one of his novels and so was glad I brought cash along as he had a few books for sale and would autograph them, as well as any that we had previously purchased, like mine which I had also taken along for my walk up town.   I like to support authors who take the time to go out and talk with people.  So here I am with Allen Eskens and if you notice cash in my hand, ready to buy a few more books from him, sheesh I never realize how short I am until I see me in photos, although he is about 6 foot tall!  I am a midget!  Enough of my introduction.  The Life We Bury is a great mystery novel, a different perspective and I can appreciate how he has been awarded the Best Debut Mystery by the Left Coast Crime Rosebud Award, the 2015 Edgar Award Finalist for Best First Novel which got him to New York to meet the who's who of mystery writers, ITW Thriller Award Finalist for Best First Novel and the MN Book Award Finalist for Best Genre Novel.   Of course I had him autograph my books, and I really thought I would add them to my collection but I am determined to downsize.  I will be sending them along to a  longtime friend from CA, who reads vociferously too and now lives in NC, he will enjoy these..  

The opening to the Life We Bury draws a reader immediately, " I remember being pestered by a sense of dread as I walked to my car that day, pressed down by a wave of foreboding that swirled around my head and broke against the evening in small ripples.  There are people in this world who would call that kind of feeling a premonition, a warning from some internal third eye that can see around the curve of time.  I've never been one to buy into such things.  But I will confess that there have been times when I think back to that day and wonder: if the fates had truly whispered in my ear--if I had known how that drive would change so many things--would I have taken a safer path?  Would I turn left where before I turned right.  Or would I still travel the path that led me to Carl Iverson?"  These are the thoughts of Joe Talbert, the main character and this novel is written in the first person, Joe is on his way to University of MN, to complete college despite everything against him all his life.  His mother is a no account alcoholic who tends to blame her sons for her difficult life, he leaves behind his 18 year old autistic brother Jeremy, but events will change that. Interesting that Allen Eskens does not go into depth to physically describe his characters.  I wondered about that when he mentioned it, but I found while reading that  but actually prefer to go with my thoughts.  He mentioned in his discussion that he only describes what may become pertinent at some point, such as that Jeremy is better looking that Joe.  Carl Iverson will become  the center of the novel as Joe struggles to complete an English  assignment writing about an older person's life.  Joe will choose to go to a skilled nursing facility and after a struggle be given the chance to talk with Carl, who is a convicted murderer serving the final days of his sentience as a terminal cancer patient, Joe will learn more about Carl's life as a decorated Vietnam combat veteran and in the discussions  talk to Carl about his own late grandfather and his death, something Joe has never spoken about with anyone. The other characters  major to the novel are Lila Nash,Joes' apartment neighbor;  Crystal Hagen the teenage girl purportedly murdered by Carl,;Carl's only friend Virgil; Andy Fisher, Crystal's boyfriend;  Doug Lockwood, Crystal's stepfather; Danny Lockwood, Crystal's stepbrother, Berthel Collins a public defender law clerk when Carl's case was tried; Boady Sander a law professor of the Innocence Project, and Max Rupert, the Minneapolis police detective.    There are other incidental characters but I did not note them.  As it turns out I will be developing a matrix because this author uses some of these characters in subsequent novels, such as Max Rupert, the detective.  

A few quotes from The Life We Bury, Page 7, "maybe she knew who my mother was and figured that no one can change the sound of an echo.."    Page 31, "The archive room had the feel of a tabernacle with millions of souls packed away on microfilm like the incense in tiny jars, waiting for someone to free their essence..."  Page 61, "but as a sinner needs the devil, I needed a scapegoat, some one I could point at and say, 'You're  responsible.".  

Page 89 struck me, as about the 3rd time in the novel that the message, "I wasn't there, I had no say in what was or wasn't ok"  There is a theme of not to judge unless you were there and maybe not even then, Carl teaches Joe this lesson again on their first meeting.

Page 193, " But in the end there's no hole deep enough.  No matter how hard you try there are some things you just can't run away from"  

Page 195 indicates that this life is our heaven, " if I didn't live my life as if I was already in heaven, and I died and found only nothingness, well...I would have wasted my life.  " 

This is a great book, 5 *****,  my only disappointment, just like life, Joe and Jeremy's alcoholic mother seems to get by with  short changing her sons. When Joe has to bail her out at the beginning I kept hoping he would not and would just walk away, but he is a better person than her. 

The Guise of Another published in 2015 , 265 pages paperback, is the debut novel featuring Max Rupert, the Minneapolis detective but introduces Max' brother Alexander Rupert. This is when I realized I would  develop a matrix  of characters to track their appearances in the novels.    This novel opens with a tryst between to people married to others and their foolish sexual activities that ruin their lives and kill James Erkel Putnam, driver of the Porsche who turns out to not be James, thus giving the title meaning.  

The opening of this novel, "That night, there were a few things that the man knew to a religious certainty.  He knew that he's soon be having sex with the woman sitting in the passenger seat of his Lexus.  He knew that neither his wife nor the woman's husband yet suspected their infidelities.  And he knew that any whisper of guilt he may have felt would soon be silenced by the tumult of their act."  

Back Cover Guise of Another

Alexander Rupert  is a Minneapolis detective banished to fraud units investigations.  His life is spiraling downward.  He was a Medal of Valor winner ( a police honor) but now under subpoena by grand jury on suspicion of corruption, shunned by other detectives, suspects his status conscious wife is having an affair but seizes an opportunity to resolve a complex case of identity theft.  Alexander encounters a trained assassin, Drago Basta, veteran of Balkan wars with many aliases, who has been searching for James Putnam for years,  The firm Patrio International  is a focus of contacts,corruption, murder and more .  As Alexander pursues his hunches against the wishes of his superiors but helped out by his brother Max, the identity theft and international implications explode from Minneapolis to New York. Alexander become too late smart as the novel winds down and he realizes that running off with Ianna Markova is not wise,  it will cost him his life.   

Page 25, "  Alexander's fall from grace.  Their recent conversations skipped like stones across the surface of their lives, never finding depth, never touching the trouble that had been visited upon Alexander."

This novel is another  5*****.  I could not wait to begin reading the 3rd.