More Bronte-like?

It seems like a lot of current films and novels are being heralded as similar in style to the workds of the Brontes. This time, it is the debut novel of a Yorkshire French teacher. The novel is called The Thirteenth Tale, and the author is Diane Setterfield.

The novel tells the story of a reclusive novelist who recounts the events of her strange life to the young woman she has selected to be her biographer.

It is written in a mysterious, gothic style with resonances of works by the Brontës, Daphne du Maurier and Wilkie Collins, as well as contemporary novels such as Sarah Waters' Fingersmith and The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

The book marks "a return to that rich mine of storytelling that our parents loved and we loved as children", said Jane Wood, Orion's editor-in-chief, who has already sold rights to Germany, Holland, Italy, France, Norway and Brazil. "It also satisfies the appetite for narrative-driven fiction that has beginnings, middles and endings, like the great novels of the 19th century. She creates a wonderful fictional world."

The entire article can be read here.