Instant classic? Not this time

WHAT is the secret of the classics’ enduring appeal?

More than a few of today’s bestselling authors have found comfort in the fact that many of the greatest works of the past, from Shakespeare’s plays to Dickens’ novels, were widely popular in their own time.

And, although you can certainly learn to appreciate the genius of less accessible artists such as James Joyce or Samuel Beckett, there is a lot to be said for “old-fashioned” writers who give us juicy stories with a clear beginning, middle and end.

So in some respects, we may concede that “Anna Karenina” is a soap opera or that “Crime and Punishment” is a detective thriller. But there’s a second factor, conveniently left out of the popularists’ self-vindicating theory. What makes these works great is not just their wide appeal but also their depth, richness and multifariousness: The qualities that make “Hamlet” more than a rattling good ghost story and “Jane Eyre” not just a Cinderella-like romance are the complexity of their characters, the brilliance of their writing, the profundity of the thought they contain and the scope of vision they embody.

If you were looking for an example of the fallacy in the popular-equals-classic argument, the hoopla accompanying the publication of “The Thirteenth Tale” would be a good place to start. This first novel by a former academic from Yorkshire, England, who specialized in French literature, was the subject of an intense bidding war by publishers. Its author, Diane Setterfield, is being touted as a brilliant storyteller in the tradition of the Brontes (who, alas, being original rather than derivative, were not as lucky in getting large advances). But the essential fallacy is contained in the book itself. “The Thirteenth Tale” explicitly sets out to capitalize on our longing for a good old-fashioned read but fails to deliver on precisely that.

The novel starts out promisingly enough as the story of two women, opposites in some ways yet ideally matched. Quiet, self-effacing Margaret Lea, who works with her father in his antiquarian bookshop in Cambridge, is an inveterate reader. And the reclusive Vida Winter is one of England’s most famous and prolific writers (a modern-day Dickens, we’re told, at once popular and critically estimable). Vida is someone whose most salient gift is her ability to enthrall readers with her imaginative tale-spinning, both in her fiction and in the patently untrue stories she tells interviewers who ask about her life.

What will happen when the enigmatic author asks this little-known bookseller to become her biographer? Is Vida Winter really ready to come clean about her past? Margaret travels up to Yorkshire to stay at Vida’s secret-filled mansion and listen to the ailing writer’s stories about the Angelfields, an unpleasant aristocratic family with a penchant for sadomasochism between siblings.

Much of the story concerns twin sisters, Adeline and Emmeline, who are legally the offspring of Isabelle Angelfield and her husband, Roland March (a character no sooner introduced than conveniently killed off), but more likely the outcome of Isabelle’s couplings with her older brother, Charlie. Isabelle also dies off soon, leaving surly Charlie to retire to his room to obsess about her and the green-eyed, copper-tressed twins to run wild.

Emmeline is prettier, more docile and utterly devoted to Adeline, no matter how much Adeline physically abuses her. The two are completely wrapped up in each other until they are separated by a well-meaning governess and a doctor who are trying (in vain) to figure out a way of helping them become more normal.

So what happened to those twins, and what’s their connection to Vida Winter? There are several twists in the tale, as might be expected in a book of some 400 pages. Although we do meet a handful of engaging secondary characters, such as the doctor, the governess and an amiable bear of a man called Aurelius, most of the novel’s focus is on the Angelfield twins and the phenomenon of twinship. Even Margaret Lea is part of this theme: When not transcribing Vida’s tales of the Angelfields, Margaret is busy obsessing about the fact that she herself is the surviving half of a pair of conjoined twins who had to be separated at birth.

The novel seems to presume that twinship and obsessive relationships are topics so innately fascinating that there’s no need to portray the characters caught up in them with any degree of depth. But the truth is, Adeline and Emmeline are downright boring because all we ever hear about them is that one of the girls is a rage-filled sadist and the other her dimwitted, devoted punching bag.

“The Thirteenth Tale” abounds with references to Margaret and Vida’s favorite books: “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights” and “The Woman in White” top their list. Placing Wilkie Collins’ hokey mystery on -- or even near -- the level of the Bronte sisters’ peerless masterpieces is in itself an indication of this author’s inability to see what makes a great work.

Although “The Thirteenth Tale” is nothing like either of the Brontes’ masterworks (despite being set in Yorkshire), it’s odd that the one Setterfield keeps invoking is not “Wuthering Heights,” which at least also deals with fierce, quasi-incestuous passions, but “Jane Eyre,” with which her book has even less in common.

Indeed, if one were casting about for a more appropriate work with which to compare Setterfield’s gothic concatenation, it would not be “Jane Eyre” but “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Bette Davis as Vida Winter?

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Merle Rubin is a critic whose work has appeared in several publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor.