The Frame

by Diane Setterfield

A friend has been recommending this to me for months, and I finally found time to sit down with it. The main character, an amateur biographer, gets summoned by an eccentric novelist who wants her to write an official biography–throughout the years the novelist has given many imaginative versions of her own life, but now it seems she wants to tell the truth, which is more than a little strange. It’s quite well-written and interesting–part fictional literary memoir, part detective story, and all gothic mystery which owes more than a little to both Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Props to Setterfield for writing the surprise twist in such a way that I guessed it at the exact same second as the heroine.
Well Above Average