Setterfield’s Success No Big Mystery

When Yorkshire author Diane Setterfield’s debut mystery was published in the United Kingdom, the media mostly ignored the book. Book buyers were equally unenthusiastic. However, when The Thirteenth Tale crossed the Atlantic earlier this month, things were quite different. The book has topped lists and broken records just about every place it’s shown up in North America.

Richard Brooks, art and culture editor with Britain’s Sunday Times, posited a theory--or perhaps regurgitated a press release--that didn’t hold much water. Brooks said Setterfield’s book had “taken off because bloggers recommended it.” Later in the same piece, Brooks remarked that the “development of Setterfield’s fan base on the Internet is similar to that which gave a kick-start to musicians such as the Arctic Monkeys, Lily Allen, and Sandi Thom.”

Except that, on examination, that doesn’t appear to have been the case at all. The fact that The Thirteenth Tale managed to debut in the number-one spot on The New York Times bestseller list and at number five on USA Today’s list seems to have had as much to do with--as Richard Lea at Culture Vulture phrases it--the sort of all-out blitz that secures “the kind of media coverage that only money can buy.” Says Lea:

It seems that Atria’s parent company, Simon & Schuster, sent out a bunch of emails to bloggers thanking them for the “great job” they’ve done “reviewing and promoting Simon & Schuster and Atria’s books in the past”. They then went on to offer them the chance of winning a “$100 American Express Gift Check” and a bunch of Atria books, “simply” by promoting this competition on their blogs.

While some bloggers bit, it seems just as likely that the big push came from other sources: a tour that includes all key North American cities, for instance. And a Web site that would turn J.K. Rowling green (and that looks as though Harry Potter might live there). As Sarah Weinman remarked on GalleyCat, “how about the fact that Barnes & Noble made [The Thirteenth Tale] their first overall recommendation, leading to massive amounts of paid co-op in every branch?”

Conventional media outside of the UK have been slow to respond, but early reviews don’t meet the hype. “Instant classic? Not this time,” says the Los Angeles Times.

And The Washington Post wasn’t drooling, either. “Setterfield’s erudite novel amounts to a sort of brainteaser, a literary riddle to occupy the mind rather than a new vision to inform it.”

The Sydney Morning Herald didn’t bother mincing words: “This book flounders because the relationship it is built around, between a biographer and her subject, is so contrived.”

For all the hype, The Thirteenth Tale sounds promising. As boiled down by The Times, the book “tells the story of a novelist who employs a biographer to write her life story, resulting in the unearthing of family secrets.”

We’ll reserve judgment, though this will be a tough book to open without opinion. The Thirteenth Tale certainly has a lot to live up to.