Who Wrote It
Thirteen Storeys is Jonathan Sims’s first novel.
Jonathan Sims is a horror writer, designer, and performer, well-known for his horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives.
First paragraph
“Five years on, it’s an all-too-familiar cliché that the only thing more interesting than the life of Tobias Fell was his death.”
What’s It About?
The book could have easily been called ‘Thirteen Stories’ as it’s a story about 13 people with connections to a 13-storey building.
Tobias Fell comes from a bloodline of ruthless entitled rich people with a history of exploitation. He’s become a recluse and lives in the penthouse suite of Banyan Court, a 13-storey building he built in the poor part of London on a site with plenty of history.
“Of course, he couldn’t be told exactly why it had to be built there, that powerful psychic frisson that seemed so very important: the history of poverty, tragedy and exploitation these bricks had been witness to at the hands of Tobias’s own ancestors.”
The front of the building is for the wealthy, while the back is ‘affordable housing’ for the not-so-well-off.
Strange things start to happen to 12 people connected to the building, including residents, employees, a workman, and a real estate agent.
Each chapter is like a short story, telling the tale of a haunting. As the story progresses, we learn how each person is connected to Tobias Fell or to the others. Most of these people are alone and obsessive personalities and the building notices them for specific reasons.
At the end of the person’s story, they receive an invitation to a dinner party.
“TOBIAS FELL cordially invites [name] to attend a dinner party at 1 Banyan Court on the evening of 16th August 2014. Penthouse access will be available through the freight elevator.”
Many of the people don’t know each other but the story deftly intertwines their stories with commonalities in personalities and backgrounds.
The tale culminates in the dinner party where all the threads come together, and we learn of Fell’s, and the building’s, interest in these particular people. We finally understand Fell’s mysterious death.
What Should You Expect?
- Expect to be creeped out but to want to keep reading even if it is late at night, and dark, and you can hear the house creaking and the wind outside making that branch tap on the window.
- Expect a masterful storyteller. Sims starts off with many threads that don’t initially feel related, but he weaves them perfectly as the story progresses.
- Expect characters that feel real, that you can empathise with and experience their descent into madness as your own.
- Expect to still be wondering whether Fell is going to get what he wants even though you know from the very first line that he dies. Or does he?
- Expect to be surprised but sated at the end.
- Expect to wonder about what it takes for people to do what would normally be unthinkable to them.
- Expect the names of characters and places and each person’s unique haunting to completely embody who and what they are.
- Expect to be thinking about this book for a while after finishing it.
Should You Read It?
Absolutely, you should read it. This is not just your run-of-the-mill haunted building story. Do not pass this book up if you get the chance to read it.
