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Thirteen
Sebastian
Beaumont
PAPERBACK |
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256 pages |
ISBN |
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978-1-905802-12-8 |
Release Date |
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29 April 2008 |
Price |
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£7.99 |
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HARDBACK |
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256 pages |
ISBN |
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978-1-905802-02-9 |
Price |
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£13.99 |
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TRADE SOFT BACK |
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256 pages |
ISBN |
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978-1-905802-03-06 |
Price |
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£9.99 |
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Thirteen is not a number,
it is a state of mind.
Thirteen is the story of Stephen Bardot, a taxi driver
working on the night shift in Brighton. He works
such long shifts that he is often driving while exhausted,
and it is then that he starts to experience major alterations
to his perception of reality. People start to
take lifts in his cab who know things they shouldn’t,
and who ultimately may not even be real, although the
question of what constitutes reality forms one of the
basic themes of the novel.
He regularly gives lifts to Valerie – beautiful,
haunting, but terminal – from 13 Wish Road to
her ‘positive thinking classes’ at the
Cornerstone Community Centre on Palmeira Square. When
he is no longer asked to collect her, he fears that
she is dead, and queries this with Sal, one of the
night operators. Her response turns Stephen’s
world upside down.
‘But Stephen,’ she tells him, ‘there
is no such address. Wish Road doesn’t have a
number thirteen.’
She’s right. Wish Road’s odd numbers
are 7, 9, 11, 11a, 15, 17… And number
11a looks totally different from the house he thinks
of as number Thirteen. So where has he
been collecting Valerie from all this time? A
house that doesn’t exist?
As time passes, the world gets weirder. People
appear (and disappear) who know far too much about
Stephen and his past, and who lure him further and
further into the twilight world of Thirteen. But
if he asks any questions, he gets hurt. Ultimately,
he decides, for the sake of both his safety and his
sanity, he must walk away.
But Thirteen has no intention of letting him go
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