Story Magic
I was ten when I first felt it. I’d been reading The Long Winter, and became so immersed in blizzards and hunger and Pa Ingalls’ struggle to keep his family alive, that I was astonished when I looked up and discovered that it was summer outside my bedroom window! At twelve I discovered Jane Eyre, and Rebecca, and other lovely gothic tales. I became the heroine wandering in those dark, mysterious, mansions. That’s the magic of good fiction—that delicious sense of being someone else, someplace else, being taken to a place we’ve never seen. Unfortunately, that becomes harder as one studies writing techniques. We go to workshops, study books on writing, learn about plot twists, repetitive words and the all-important conflict. We pick up a novel and immediately start to analyze technique, word tricks, plot holes and weak characters. Losing ourselves in the story becomes rare. I miss it. And so, I’m extra grateful when I stumble upon a book that, once again, gives me back that elusive feeling of story magic. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield managed to do that for me recently. There’s a bookish, plain, heroine hired to help an elderly eccentric author write her biography, […]