The Thirteenth Tale
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
Book Type: Paperback
There was a moment, as I was reading this, when I thought I might just be able to soldier on: the text shifted from Margaret Lea's first person narration (dreary, over-heated, and determined to find EVERYTHING, from the curtains on the windows to the books on the shelves, rather spooky and fraught with deeper meaning ...) to Vida Winter's altogether different narration of her dark and perverse upbringing. The tone suddenly lightened, and we moved from fraught Victorian melodrama, to an almost wicked parody, like Austen's "Northanger Abbey," with the authorial voice clearly signalling, "Oh, for heaven's sake, this is all a bit of nonsense, don't take it so seriously ...!!!"
And then, we were back to Margaret again, and I realized that I still had about a billion pages of this drivel to read, and I decided that, not that's it, I'm out.
This just feels like an unholy brew of too many nights spent reading Victorian melodrama and Gothic novels, and not quite getting what makes the best of them rise above the standard run of drivel. I suspect the best of the Gothics pull off the trick of seducing the reader into rooting for the dark side. We want Jane Eyre -- straight as an arrow, and rather smug -- to get Rochester, in spite of the inconvenient madwoman he has stashed in the attic. We secretly hanker after the perpetrators of the dark doings in "The Moonstone" and "The Woman in White." Their "babes in the woods" heroes and heroines aren't half as much fun.
And that's the trouble with this book -- it just isn't FUN.
And then, we were back to Margaret again, and I realized that I still had about a billion pages of this drivel to read, and I decided that, not that's it, I'm out.
This just feels like an unholy brew of too many nights spent reading Victorian melodrama and Gothic novels, and not quite getting what makes the best of them rise above the standard run of drivel. I suspect the best of the Gothics pull off the trick of seducing the reader into rooting for the dark side. We want Jane Eyre -- straight as an arrow, and rather smug -- to get Rochester, in spite of the inconvenient madwoman he has stashed in the attic. We secretly hanker after the perpetrators of the dark doings in "The Moonstone" and "The Woman in White." Their "babes in the woods" heroes and heroines aren't half as much fun.
And that's the trouble with this book -- it just isn't FUN.
