"Eerie and fascinating..." USA Today said. This is the more diplomatic way of saying what most readers, including myself, may have thought. My words were along the lines of...bizarre. Twisted. And more than a little creepy.
Don't get me wrong - I thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing is absolutely beautiful - I began marking passages that I liked, but stopped after the first chapter when I realized I was turning the entire book yellow - I thought briefly about highlighting the passages that did nothing for me, but that just seemed silly, so I laid my highlighter aside and just immersed myself in the rhetoric. The words, their style and their rhythm reminiscent of an earlier period in literary history when the words with which the story is written are equally as important as the story they tell, these words were paced. It was no Twilight - no rush through the tale, no reading into the deepest recesses of the night, no looking up and realizing that you've read 50 pages in the last half hour but have learned nothing. It had depth. It required mastication. In shorter terms, Thirteenth Tale was not, as my brother so aptly book it, "intellectual popcorn". Neither was it chicken soup. Neither caviar nor stew. No, it was more like a Reuben. A little tart and difficult to swallow at times, neither wholly tasteful nor bad-tasting, neither elite nor ordinary, odd but gently addicting.
In fact, that is exactly how I would describe the book - gently addicting. I found, halfway through it, that although I felt no particular connection to the characters or their stories, when I considered not finishing the book, something nudged me to continue. A soft curiosity which never once turned to obsession. As the tale progressed, that soft curiosity did turn into a more resolute wonderment. The twisted tale, impossible to deduce the mysteries, was appealing for its bizarre tragedy. But more than anything, I appreciated the fact that, although the story was strange, it was certainly not unbelievable, especially because there was no stupid sidestory - no one was being followed, no chase scenes, no bomb to defuse. Just painful secrets. I was wrapped in the story, like a very warm blanket, but it did not force itself on me and smother me like other books have (again, Twilight comes to mind). It was beautiful in its simplicity, and simple in its beauty.
The book ends well, with resolution and a beautiful closure. It was a book that, upon finishing, I furrowed my brow. Hm, I thought. Hm.
My recommendation: read it.
