For my final review of Hallowe’en 2020 I’m going to review a book not due out for a couple of weeks yet. However, I enjoyed it so much I thought that it might be worth a little heads-up.
Thirteen Stories is a great example of an anthology novel – one where a number of stories are connected together by a framing story. I used to love these anthologies as movies too – anyone who has seen old Amicus movies such as Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972) or Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) will know what I mean.
In this case the framing story is that of billionaire Tobias Fell, who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in his penthouse in the flats he owned in Banyan Court, London.
We are told that on the night of his death Fell had a meal with thirteen invited guests, all seemingly unconnected to himself. They did not know each other, nor had met Fell before that evening. Each of the thirteen guests tells a story here, until the end where things connect for a final conclusion.
This is a great setup. You may know Jonathan from his audio podcast, The Magnus Files, where Jonathan narrates stories as the archivist of strange tales, and I can see that this would work very well in that format. From the first character, Jonathan piles on the chills to create an effective atmosphere throughout.
The characters are expectedly diverse, which makes the reader wonder what common connection they share. They all have very different backgrounds which suggest that they wouldn’t normally socialise. There are rich people and poor people (living in the less salubrious part of the block at the back of the building).There are students, lifestyle gurus, cleaners and maintenance men, concierges, estate agents, rich girls living off Daddy’s money, single parents struggling to make a living and children left alone to amuse themselves, amongst others.
Part of the fun is working out how all of the thirteen characters are connected. Some of them meet in their respective stories, although their reason for being at the banquet is not clear until towards the end. We discover along the way that throughout all the mysterious billionaire pervades everything. Tobias is not a nice person, which makes the reason for the invitations all the more intriguing.
All is resolved at the end, and the ending makes both logical sense and is a suitable ending to the novel.
I picked this one up with no knowledge of its contents or the author, and as a result was pleasantly surprised by what I read. I found it to be a book that starts slowly but grips and builds to an effective end. A book that takes old traditions and gives them a contemporary spin. Happy Halloween, all.
Thirteen Stories by Jonathan Sims
Published by Gollancz, November 2020
328 pages
ISBN: 978 0 857 82788 3
Review by Mark Yon
