I READ THE Thirteenth Tale a few years ago because our book club selected it. I wound up not liking it much—mainly, I think, because of the way the plot was resolved. In The Thirteenth Tale, a famous novelist at the end of her career tells her last tale, apparently autobiographical, about two sisters in a complicated family. The novelist is one of the sisters, one guesses...but which one? The reader weighs this question for a few hundred pages, at the end of which we find out...that neither sister is the novelist. A character we knew nothing about, living secretly in the same house as the sisters, is the novelist.
What? Is that playing the game? In my mind, no.
The rest of the club enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale, though, so I suppose it was just a matter of time before we chose Once Upon a River. In the opening chapters, a girl about four years old is rescued from the River Thames—she seems drowned, but revives, miraculously. But she cannot speak. Whose child is she? Two different local families have recently lost a child and think she may be theirs. For a few hundred pages, we are invited to speculate: is she the lost daughter of the Vaughns, or the lost granddaughter of the Armstrongs?
Guess what?
She is neither!
Ha! Same trick. I did not like it any better this time.
I wouldn’t mind this so much if the writing and overall texture of the novel were more up my alley. They just aren’t. The novel is an over-decorated Victorian parlor, loaded with bric-à-brac, embroidery, padding, and ornamentation. It’s like sinking into a plush, over-stuffed sofa.
But the rest of the book club loved Once Upon a River, though, so I may be in for more Diane Setterfield.
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