Diane Setterfield "The Thirteenth Fairy Tale"

The British writer Diana Setterfield, likeBel Kaufman (another talented debutante) earned her living by teaching. But in 2006, Diana's life abruptly changed: her debut novel "The Thirteenth Fairy Tale" took the first line in the best-selling rating of The New York Times. The novel was translated into different languages ​​and published in more than thirty countries.

"The Thirteenth Fairy Tale" is written in the best traditions Gothic novel (this genre, by the way, served as the ancestor"The horror literature," King and Lovecraft "grew up" precisely from the Gothic novel). Roman Setterfield is often compared with the works of the sisters Bronte (in particular, "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights") and Daphne Dumorie. Reviewers even called the book "Thirteenth Fairy Tale" "New" Jen Eyre "».

The main heroine of the novel "The Thirteenth Fairy Tale" Margaret Lee works in the second-hand bookshop owned by her father. But one day Margaret receives an unusual proposal: the most famous contemporary writer Vida Winter invites her to become her biographer. An unexpected turn of events, for Miss Winter is not only famous for her books, but also for not having told a single interviewer a single word of truth.

Of course, Margaret agrees, and herethe fun begins. She moves into a gloomy mansion, inhabited by the ghosts of the past. In the walls of this mansion there is a story of twin sisters, Gothic in the literal sense of the word. Strangely, she echoes the personal history of Margaret herself and gradually leads to a clue to the mystery that has driven many generations of readers crazy - mystery of the Thirteenth Fairy Tale.

The rights to the novel "The Thirteenth Fairy Tale" were boughtfor an incredible sum for a beginner. For the British edition Diana Setterfield received 800 thousand pounds sterling, for the American - one million dollars. The book is considered a recognized masterpiece of modern English prose, which opened to the general public a genre "Neo-Gothic". Critics even talk about the fact that the novel Setterfield marked the return of the golden age of the British novel.

Now Diana Setterfield is working on her second novel. And it's gratifying, because some debutants(for example, Mariam Petrosyan) after the success of their first book decide on this and stop their literary activities. Let's hope that the next work of Setterfield takes the bar of quality set to her and even raises her.

Quotations from the novel "Thirteenth Fairy Tale"

"Human lives are not separate threads,They can be released from the coil and neatly arranged on a flat surface. The family is a patterned web. It is impossible to touch one of its threads, without causing the vibration of all the others. It is impossible to understand a particle without understanding the whole ... "

"Ordinary people-that is, not twins-are looking for kindred spirits, fall in love, marry. Suffering from their own incompleteness, they try to make a couple with someone "

"All children mythologize their appearance in the world. So we are arranged. Do you want to better understand a person, to see his true nature? Ask him to tell about his own birth. What you will hear in return will not be true; it will be a fantastic story. But it is from such stories that we learn the most important thing "

"Birth is not a real beginning. Our life from its first minutes is not something that belongs exclusively to us; in reality it is just a continuation of someone's history "