Connecting With Ms S.

I’m finding myself becoming quite enthralled by the world contained within the covers of The Thirteenth Tale. It’s sufficiently far outside the box to be intriguing, but not so far as to be called fantastical. Diane Setterfield is a wonderful observer of the quirky little things which fill the minds and lives of slightly odd – and maybe even not so odd – people, and her use of metaphor is beguiling at times.

And you know what? After I’d read this evening’s ration of three chapters, I checked my blog and found that the mysterious visitor who comes here fairly regularly using Chrome browser on an Android phone – and whose location is never recorded by Blogger stats – had visited and read a particular post. And so I read the post, and was surprised to find that I was reading pretty much the same style as I’d just put back on the little bookcase in my office. It was a pleasant surprise. (I wonder whether Diane Setterfield and I would get on. That would be a rare thing indeed, but maybe not. They say opposites attract, don’t they?)

And here’s something else I find interesting. This book was recommended to Mel by a friend of hers who hasn’t quite finished it yet. Mel subsequently recommended it me when she was about half way through. And now I’m about a third of the way through. We’ve formed a Thirteenth Tale train, haven’t we? A locomotive, a carriage, and a guards van (caboose to Americans), all running happily on a track twisting this way and that through a sumptuous landscape en route to the terminus at the end of the book. I’m prepared to guess that Ms Setterfield would quite like that.