ANA Book Club?

[Kaybo]

jan~
Yeah, I was just thinking that if you were staying up until 3, you must be pushing for one of those high paying moderator jobs!!!!   

K

[leapyrtwins]

Good point, K.

If I play my cards right, I might be next in line.  I could use one of those fancy cars and the private jet 

[Kaybo]

to  come see me & Lori, of course and then we can all fly away to the island!!

K

[leapyrtwins]

Ahhhh.  If life only worked out the way we planned 

[Soundy]

I go to sleep fairly easily ...around 11:30 or 12 only to get up between 2:30 and 3 and usually am drifting back
off about the time to get rid of husband for the day... at least with the girls out for the summer I can go
back and sleep til they get up... when school was in session I had to stay up... with no school I get to sleep again
from about 7 til 9 and then an afternoon nap if we are home and with price of gas we will be home more than
usual for the summer...

Ahhhh.  If life only worked out the way we planned    ... I second that 

[leapyrtwins]

Less than a week til discussion starts.  Will everyone be ready?  I know some of us have finished the book and some of us are still reading, but I don't know about everybody.

Steve?  Kate?  Mary BK? 

I am anxious to discuss.  Can we stick with the 13th, or does anyone need more time?

Jan

[sgerrard]

I am on page 255 (The Ladder). Should make it by Friday no problem; maybe sooner, I seem to have some reading time this week. Good book, by the way.

Steve

[leapyrtwins]

Steve -

glad you're going to make it    It is a good book.  I've started reading another good book called The Story of a Marriage.  It's kind of a short book - less than 200 pages - and I'm really enjoying it. 

Jan

[Kaybo]

Steve~
Are you going to start us out with the 1st discussion question?  I will be back around noonish (Central time) tomorrow - plans have changed & now Addi is riding the camp bus from Oklahoma City so I don't have to drive all the way to Branson!  YEA!  Did I alrady tell y'all that??     Anyway, I'll be in tomorrow - can't wait to discuss!!

K

[leapyrtwins]

I think Steve is going to ask the first question tomorrow.  At least that was the original plan.

Can't wait to discuss!  I thought this was a great book.  Thanks again for suggesting it, K.

Jan

[Soundy]

I got to reading it Monday and Finished up Tuesday evening ... and to keep my mouth shut started
reading Secret Lives of Bee about 3 Wednesday Morning and finished it up around 4 this morning

My husband says if I would quit buying books I would sleep at night...he says they are sitting around
wanting to be read and that is what keeps me up... but I bought alot of books and was given some
because I couldn't sleep , I am not buying into his theory ...

I started school reading with no apparent person having taught me to read... I have an osmosis theory of
watching and listening to older sister doing home work... didn't do kindergarten and my first grade teacher
was fascinated by a student already reading well above grade level and gave me books ... I have always read
as far as I can remember and don't plan on stopping be cause my husband thinks the books are waking me up

Have to be gone most of the day tomorrow but will check in ASAP

[sgerrard]

Okay, it is Friday the Thirteenth somewhere in the world by now, I am officially opening the discussion of The Thirteenth Tale.

Where to begin? No matter, much like the book itself, we will no doubt wander through all the possible topics and detours and byways anyway.

I have two questions on my mind.

The first one is about Emmeline. In the chapter called Snow, near the end of the book, after all is revealed, Margaret refers to her like this: "Miss Winter had escaped; so had the woman Judith referred to as Emmeline, and whom I avoided naming." A few pages later, she is describing three funerals in three days, and says "There were only Judith, Maurice, the doctor and me to mourn the woman referred to throughout the service as Emmeline." What is the meaning of this? Is Margaret (or the author) being coy? Is there something not settled about which one is Emmeline?

The second question is about Adeline. Is such a person possible? She was apparently a young girl with an astonishing appetite for violence, and a willingness to kill the gardener and to try killing her sister's baby, burning the house down in the attempt. Can such things be?

Steve

[Soundy]

The second question is about Adeline. Is such a person possible? She was apparently a young girl with an astonishing appetite for violence, and a willingness to kill the gardener and to try killing her sister's baby, burning the house down in the attempt. Can such things be?

Steve

Unfortunately yes there are children like that ... I have a scar on my forehead put there when I was about 6 month old by
my nearly 3 year old sister... held me by ankles and whacked me against edge of table because she didn't want a sister...
and things went down hill from there... have a knife scar in the back of the hand because when I was 14 I refused to give
her a pair of underwear that had frogs on the front kissing and the back showed their hands which they were holding ...
dumb thing to get stabbed over ... and she got them in the end ... not that her 200 pound behind  could fit in them since at time
I weighed in at a whopping 80 lbs ... but she got them ... she spent much of her growing up years in and out of mental
hospitals and group homes mostly to keep us other kids safe... after she had hurt me several times I don't think I would
have had anymore kids ... but my dad had to have sons and so have three younger brothers that also got to suffer at
her hands...

she was not right since birth and never got past it ... she is more stable now than she has ever been in her life ... living with a
man and helping him raise his grand kids ... she has 5 kids of her own that she never raised past 2 before they were taken away ...
three ads between them ... one dad has three of them ...one child not his biologically but the only dad he has ever known


This confused me and I did some re-reading for something I missed... Was  Emmaline the one to parish in the fire Did Adeline
survive  it and live out her life hidden by Miss Winters??? what exactly was Emmaline digging for in the garden...

Margaret give Aurelius the casket of ashes and he says Is that what you have for me ... is that the rest of my story? ...leading
us to believe that the ashes are those of Emmaline ... Did Miss Winter keep the burned twin to care for her if she was Emmaline
or for some other reason if it was Adeline ... no one but her would have known since the twin had lost communication skills ... and
the burnt twin had to be known as Emmaline since Miss Winters had been impersonating Adeline to the lawyer

With a set of twins of my own I had other interests ... the good twin bad twin thing... one of mine is impulsive and likely to do
things before thinking getting in trouble and was labeled at school as the bad twin... they can still be inseparable at times and at
28 this bugs the good twins wife to no end ...
she can't except that they have to have eachother... they will get time off and spend a 3 or 4 days together ...
playing computer games ,fishing ,sitting around reading and no one else exists... they introduce them selves as the good twin and
the bad twin... never bad to the extent Adaline was , but a big difference and people can't get over the personality differences
since their faces match... the odd thing is the one labeled the bad is tenderhearted and easily hurt...when younger he was quick to
anger and go into fist mode to settle ant differences .... the good one lets stuff roll off his back and not much bothers him...he
would talk his way out of jams... if together though they would both go to fists to settle something between them and anyone ...
the bad one would prevail in his methods and the good would follow ... they have been like that since about 5 or 6 month old ...
this made me think of the theory in the book that a whole person was split in two and each got only a set of certain traits ... my
boys are like this ... one darker and gets depressed the other happy go lucky ... when this was raised when they were little doctors
told me I worried to much and they would out grow it ... still waiting ...

Something else that struck me was Emmaline's tolerance of Adeline hitting her ... my twins could get mad and beat each other to
the ground if they wanted to ...but no one else could lay a hand on either without having to deal with the other twin...protective
of each other but would still fight among themselves ... but didn't tolerate anyone hurting their twin

I have to go but couldn't not stop in

[leapyrtwins]

My two cents worth.

Yes, kids can be rotten - happens all the time.  I remember some kids from my childhood who fit the Adeline description.  Thankfully none of them were in my immediate family or circle of friends, but we definitely knew who to stay away from 

As for Emmeline.  I don't think we can ever be sure that she was the one who survived the fire.  I'm not even sure that Miss Winters knew.  Perhaps she was just hoping it was the "kinder, gentler" twin.  I will say though that I thought it was one of the great twists in the story.  It had me paging backwards to reread parts of the beginning of the book to see if I could figure out this mystery.

Incredible stories, Soundy.  Thanks for sharing.  I'm sorry your sister was such a menace and I can only imagine what affect that had on you and your siblings.  As for your twins, I often jokingly refer to mine as the good twin and the evil twin since it seems like on any given day one of them is acting up.  They are two very distinct personalities - have been since the day they were born - but there are times they "flip-flop" and seem to trade places.  I have also found that what one doesn't think of, the other one does.  When they were toddlers I used to use the phrase "monkey see, monkey do" to describe their actions.  They turned this into "monkey do see" and we still use that expression today 

Jan

[cindyj]

Hi all,

The "feeling" of this book is still w/ me - do you know what I mean?  This is one that I would eventually like to reread to see the hints that the author reveals along the way.

Remember at the end of the book that Maraget said that she knew people hated to be left hanging, not knowing what happened in the end to certain characters, etc and, therefore, she told us about the housekeeper, the doctor, herself, etc.  Yet, the author deliberately leaves us "hanging" with the question of which twin died in the fire...I really think it was Emmaline who perished and Adeline that was still living w/ Miss Winter.  But either way, what great twists this author had.  I thought it was enough of a twist when we found out about the third sister - did you guys suspect something like that?

I really liked all the references to Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc as I, like Margaret, read and re-read those books growing up.  I probably suffered from the same "romantic" illness that the doctor said Margaret had at some point in my teens...perhaps I still do at times...

Wow, Soundy, this book must really have hit home for you in several ways.  Sibling rivalry was, apparently, taken to a whole different level in your house.  I always hate to hear about children suffering, but particularly in their own homes where they should feel safe.  What a lot for you to deal with...

Cindy