Stack of Spines

The Thirteenth Tale is a marvelous book. It’s a work of art and homage to so many wonderful tales and styles.  I read it over a period of two days because I just couldn’t put it down — this is one of relatively few in which I can truly lose myself.  The plot played like a movie in my head with the events unfolding before my eyes.  I could see each of the characters, observe Vida’s wrinkles, and imagine their voices as they all contributed to tell the Thirteenth Tale.

The book had all of the elements I look for that makes one great — a little mystery, love, scandal, intriguing sub-plots and characters, and a great baseline story with a unique premise.  I thought about the characters after I finished and wished I could visit Angelfield for a cup of tea.

The back jacket describes it as “a love letter to reading” and I absolutely agree.  This is priceless:

“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 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. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And everyday I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.”