This week's book review is a little different from what I normally do. Lately, I have been reviewing either new releases, or sharing my lists of favorites in a particular theme.

But the novel I read for this review planted a question in my brain that has been gnawing at me: Why do we need fiction?

This query was sparked by a book that has been on my reading list for several years now: Diane Setterfield's "The Thirteenth Tale."

It is the story of two women, a prolific writer Vida Winters, and the introverted bookkeeper/amateur biographer Margaret Lea. Both of these women come from painful pasts and use fiction (Vida by writing it, Maragret by reading it) as a coping mechanism.

One day, Vida writes a letter to Margaret requesting that they meet so they can write down Vida's biography. Initially, Margaret is hesitant, because in all of the writer's past interviews, it is clear that Vida has always told a different life story, none of which could be proven true.

This time, however, Vida promises to tell her true narrative, and as her grandest tale unfolds, both women face their ghosts — those of the past and those that are the lingering shadows of something more, which they must bring themselves to accept.

As Vida explains in her letter: "A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth." The more I thought about this line, the more I thought about the power that fantasies and legends have on us.

Why is that? What is it about make-believe that can affect us just as, if not more so, than what happens in our real lives?

Some could say we all need an escape from the mundane yet stressful constraints of reality every now and then. Others might say, fiction is more fun - would you ever see cowboys fighting aliens in real life, or child-wizards using magic and wits to defeat great forces of evil?

Even fictional stories based on true events seem to add an extra element of appeal — a more colorful character trait or a tweak of heightened melodrama - that the original truth did not quite possess.

But in the end, isn't fiction at its core an imaginatively ornamented, carefully crafted and deftly delivered lie?

Is it because truth is difficult, and fantasy is easy? Is it because we can tell ourselves when bad events happen in a fabricated story, "It didn't really happen?" Then the inevitable happy ending comes along to make everything all right and we have to accept what happens, good or bad, and can only pray for a happy ending that may never come at all?

Like Vida and Margaret, is fiction the only way to cope with the uncontrollable, unpredictable and nonnegotiable nonfiction of life?

Perhaps one cannot exist without the other. After all, anything that exists in our reality — art, architecture, technology, literature — had to be conjured up by imagination first. Anything we can creatively conceive is influenced by our real life experiences, observations and trials.

Someone out there may not think we need it as much as I feel we do; maybe someone has a completely different theory altogether.

I welcome anyone to share their opinions with me, and I may include your replies in one of my upcoming reviews.

As for "The Thirteenth Tale," while it does give its readers charming characters, a well-paced plot and touches the most tender chords about family, love and life, the reason I encourage everyone to pick up this novel is for one reason: For a book to move me to want to pose a discussion about the human condition so fervently makes the literary journey all the more memorable and worthwhile.

Alison Reeger Cook is a Gainesville resident whose Off the Shelves book review appears every other week in Sunday Life. Know of a good book to review? E-mail her to tell her about it. Her column appears biweekly and on gainesvilletimes.com/life.