Synopsis:
Vida Winter, a bestselling yet reclusive novelist, has created many outlandish life histories for herself, all of them invention. Now old and ailing, at last she wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life. Her letter to biographer Margaret Lea - a woman with secrets of her own - is a summons. Vida's tale is one of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family: the beautiful and wilful Isabelle and the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline. Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling, but as a biographer she deals in fact not fiction and she doesn't trust Vida's account. As she begins her researches, two parallel stories unfold. Join Margaret as she begins her journey to the truth - hers, as well as Vida's.

I really liked this book! And I had no expectations at all, so discovering that I just wanted to continue reading was such a nice feeling for me (it's been a while since I felt like that about a book).

The thirteenth tale has a little bit of everything, and the overall bookish theme was a bonus! There are some things that could have been improved, in my opinion, but they never became to annoying for me, and the story engaged me to the very end. Not a piece of monumental writing, but a story to be read and enjoyed!

Reiser videre som adventskalenderbok nr.11.
http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/31/4896536/

God lesning! :)

What a lovely surprise! After a long day at work, my students had an oral mock exam today, I came back home to find a book from my wishlist!

Thanks a lot, shimi - I'm really looking forward to this book!

What a wonderful read! Best book I've read in ages.

The gothic tale caught me from page one, I just could not put the book down. It also reminded me of some great reads I've had, and that I have to re-read; Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Wuthering Heights etc. I think I need a personal goal of re-reading classics!

I laughed out load when Dr. Clinton told Margaret that she was "suffering from an ailment that afflicts ladies of romantic imagintaion". A prescription of ten pages of Sir Arthur Canon Doyle, twice a day... I like it!

The only bad thing about this book is that I do not know what to read next! Everything I try to pick up is wrong. And as this was something that Margaret actually mentioned on her birthday: "All morning I struggled with the sensation of stry wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start to read 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 fibres of your clothes, and when you open the new book they are still with you."

This is really I book I'd like to keep - but it's of in the post tomorrow toghether with a bookring, as it is on the wishlist of the next participant of the ring.
Thank you a lot Shimi for sharing this gem of a book! (And I do have plans for the other copy I got as well!)

SO Thank you!! You shouldn't have - oh, yes you should. I'm so thrilled to receive a copy of this book, and for once I am catching up with ring books so intend to take this book on holiday to Tenerife at the end of the month. Holidays, holidays!

Why did it take me so long to get aound to reading this truly absorbing tale? There were a lot of sections, such as quoted by Haugtussa, where I hugged the pleasure brought on by the phrases and ideas like a comfort blanket. Thank you so much for sharing.

left on a table at the Deli on the corner of Allandale Rd and Francis St.

a remarkable storyline which stopped me from putting it down, such imagination and detail, struggle to understand why there are no more from the author, well done best book i've read for a long time, the book has enjoyed a holiday in Lazaroti now returned to Leicester not sure where to take it now and leave it for another set of hands and eyes !!!! PD