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I custodi di Slade House
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Horror (2015)Voltato l'angolo di una via di Londra, proprio dove occhieggiano le vetrine di un popolare pub inglese, lungo il muro di mattoni che costeggia un vicolo strettissimo, se tutto gira per il verso giusto, troverete l'ingresso di Slade House. Un perfetto sconosciuto vi accoglierà chiamandovi per nome e vi inviterà a entrare. La vostra prima reazione sarà la fuga. Ma presto vi accorgerete che allontanarsi è impossibile. Ogni nove anni, l'ultimo sabato di ottobre, gli abitanti della casa - una sinistra coppia di gemelli - estendono il loro particolare invito a una persona speciale, sola o semplicemente diversa: un adolescente precoce, un poliziotto fresco di divorzio, un timido studente universitario. Ma che cosa succede, veramente, dentro Slade House? Per chi ha varcato la soglia, scoprirlo è questione di un attimo. Ed è già troppo tardi. Raccontato nell'arco di tempo compreso tra il 1979 e la notte di Halloween del 2015, in puro stile Mitchell, "I custodi di Slade House" è una storia gotica nella quale l'autore ci porta in una realtà parallela abitata dalle molte anime che popolano i suoi romanzi.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2015
2523 people are currently reading
61485 people want to read
About the author
David Mitchell
84 books15.3k followersDavid Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature. He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England. After another stint in Japan, he currently lives in Ireland with his wife Keiko and their two children. In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote: "I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself." Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. Mitchell's American editor at Random House is novelist David Ebershoff.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 8,600 reviews
June 24, 2018
so, whoopsie! i read this thinking it was a standalone book (inasmuch as any david mitchell books are standalones), but it actually takes place in the same world as The Bone Clocks, which i am already ashamed about not having read (yet) and am now re-shamed by this book's exposing me to creatures and situations without the context of The Bone Clocks under my belt.
dammit.
with this in mind, i can say that this holds its own as a self-contained supernatural/haunted house story. i didn't at any point feel lost or baffled. however, i suspect that those of you who have made better choices in life and have read The Bone Clocks will appreciate it on a whole other level. i have only read two other david mitchell books, but as a hardcore fan of both jonathan carroll and donald harington, i know that reading-shimmer that occurs when you encounter a character you did not expect to see, and how while their appearance might not impact the story in any crucial way, it's gratifying - a little nod to the fans who have been paying attention. so i missed out on that nod here, and i may have missed out on more. won't know until i finally read that book everybody's talking about…
come to my blog!
dammit.
with this in mind, i can say that this holds its own as a self-contained supernatural/haunted house story. i didn't at any point feel lost or baffled. however, i suspect that those of you who have made better choices in life and have read The Bone Clocks will appreciate it on a whole other level. i have only read two other david mitchell books, but as a hardcore fan of both jonathan carroll and donald harington, i know that reading-shimmer that occurs when you encounter a character you did not expect to see, and how while their appearance might not impact the story in any crucial way, it's gratifying - a little nod to the fans who have been paying attention. so i missed out on that nod here, and i may have missed out on more. won't know until i finally read that book everybody's talking about…
come to my blog!
April 11, 2020
“Tonight feels like a board-game designed by M C Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever.”
Rather like this book.
David Mitchell is usually shelved and sold alongside other writers of "Literary Fiction" (a label I dislike). He's twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and his novels often bulge with beautifully crafted images.
This is in a different mould; it's Mitchell having fun, and needs to be read as a much lighter confection in terms of style, though a rather darker one in terms of plot.
Slade House started as an experimental short story called “The Right Sort”, picking up on the psychsoterical section of The Bone Clocks, and published in tweets (https://twitter.com/SceptreBooks/time...). It took on a life of its own, and Mitchell expanded it into four more sections, creating Slade House.
Like many of his novels, this is a collection of connected short stories, with predacity as the underlying theme, here indicated by the Fox and Hounds (a chase game, a pub, a weapon, but most importantly, an analogy). In this case, there are five sections, nine years apart, starting in 1979, and ending TODAY - the day I finished reading it, and the day I am writing this review (31 October 2015)!
Each section is narrated by a person who visits the eponymous house, and each has a distinctive voice (a strong feature of all Mitchell’s works). The plots are less distinctive, but that’s no accident. Instead, there's hypnotic repetition to lure the reader into this mysterious world, and build expectations of what will happen to each visitor. The title page of each section has an illustration of a talismanic object.
1979, The Right Sort (small, black, iron door in a brick wall)
The narrator is Nathan Bishop, thirteen years old, on the autistic spectrum (as is one of Mitchell’s sons), and a synaesthete (“it’s a maroon-coloured name”). He and his mother, Rita, have been invited by Lady Norah Grayer to a recital at Slade House, on the last Saturday of October.
Nathan’s narrative style reminded me strongly of Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time: he mentions special numbers, describes his difficulty interpreting people, and his struggles to “act normal”. When he became preoccupied with a dead cat, I assumed a deliberate nod, though Schroedinger would also be apt. And then in the fourth chapter, “Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia… like Schroedinger’s Cat inside a box you can never open.”
There is an air of magic as soon as the Bishops enter the garden of Slade House through a small, black, iron door in the wall. Rita goes into the house and Nathan stays outside with a boy called Jonah who may or may not be Lady Grayer’s son. They play Fox and Hound, but Nathan gets dizzy and disoriented. He assumes it’s his mother’s Valium playing tricks on him, but things get more confused.
Standard creepy-house story fare: creaky stairs, a strange clock, an ethereal face at a window, oddly familiar portraits, disorientating visions, strangers who seem to know you, twins, a warning, a hypnotic candle…
1988, Shining Armour (a clock without hands)
This opens in the nearby Fox and Hounds pub and is narrated by racist, wife-beating Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds.
The investigation into the Bishops’ disappearance has been reopened because a widow cleaner called Fred Pink has woken from a nine-year coma and remembers seeing them going in. More than once, it’s stressed that the police want him to feel he’s being taken seriously (why?), even though they don’t think he has much credibility.
Nevertheless, it’s reason for DI Edmonds to visit Chloe Chetwynd at Slade House. It’s all sweetness and light… until it becomes disorienting (but rather familiar).
1997, Oink Oink (Tiffany compact and mirror)
A university ParaSoc (Paranormal Society) meet at the Fox and Hounds, before investigating the nearby Slade Alley vanishings. Cue justification for handy exposition and recap by Axel Hardwick, the group leader and nephew of Fred Pink.
This is the central chapter, numerically and plot-wise, but the characters are a checklist of student stereotypes that I found shallow and annoying. Even when writing for fun, Mitchell can do better than this.
The narrator is Sally Timms, born in 1979, a bulimic and insecure young woman, who was nicknamed “oink oink” by bullies at boarding school. She feels guilty about the fact her family’s money comes from oil, and is fond but jealous of her older sister, Freya, in New York. When Sally wanted to visit, Freya fobbed her off with a Tiffany compact.
They find Slade House is accommodation for overseas students sponsored by the Erasmus Institute, and a Halloween party is in full swing, hosted by Kate Childs. It’s all good fun… until it becomes disorienting (but familiar), though Sally assumes it’s because someone switched the labels as to which brownies were doped.
A pattern has been firmly developed, but
2006, You Dark Horse (silver hairpin with fox head)
Journalist Freya Timms (narrating) meets elderly Fred Pink at the Fox and Hounds, both feeling guilt for their family member who went missing nine years earlier. They share what they’ve found out. Fred knows a great deal about Norah and Jonah Grayer, telepathic twins in Edwardian/WW1 days, and about The Shaded Way, and other psychosoterica (cue for more, somewhat lazy exposition, causing ). Freya is sceptical but professional.
This is the fourth chapter; I’d relaxed into the pattern and style of the story, .
2015, Astronauts (ancient Ninevite candlestick with runic markings)
Norah Grayer is narrating, which is a bit of a surprise. She’s targeting Dr Iris Marinus, a Canadian psychologist who bought Fred Pink’s notebooks, and who is Engifted. Here, Mitchell lets rip with the psychsoterical mumbo-jumbo (see below) and plot fireworks too. I almost cheered at one point. But Mitchell never closes the doors behind him; there’s scope for much more in future books.
The Ethics of Immortality
“Did the pig whose smoked flesh you ate at breakfast ‘deserve’ her fate?”
“What’s a metalife without a mission? It’s mere feeding.”
The underlying situation in this world is, as in The Bone Clocks, two groups of immortals: The Anchorites who achieve it by killing, soul-stealing and hijacking bodies, and the Horologists, who are unwittingly reborn and ever on the trail of the evil Anchorites: “You murder for immorality… we are sentenced to it”.
“Might is Right is nature’s way… from such an array of vultures… from feudal lords to slave traders to oligarchs to neocons to predators like you. All of you strangle your consciences, and ethically you strike yourselves dumb.”
Occult Jargon
Mitchell has fun here. Most of the jargon is familiar to anyone who has read The Bone Clocks, but if not, it’s explained as much as it needs to be in the book.
“The orison’s imploding” … “Marinus, fast as thought, glyphed a concave mirrorfield”… “puts his left forefinger on our guest’s front chakra eye”… “a dying operandi… get the guest to the lacuna” … “psychovoltaic pauperdom”… and so on.
Short Glossary
Links to Other Mitchell Book
My reviews of all his books are on my mitchell-uber-book shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Everything Mitchell publishes has links to some of his other books; they’re part of an uber-novel, and as it’s more of a web than a line, it doesn’t much matter where you start. Slade House is explicitly related to The Bone Clocks, especially the penultimate chapter of TBC, where the battle between two tribes of immortals peaks. Other connections to Mitchell’s oeuvre include:
• Nathan is the same age as Jason Taylor in Black Swan Green and also a bit of misfit – though far more than Jason.
• The clock with words instead of hands has a “pale-as-bone clock face”.
• Chetwynd-Pitt is an unpleasant Cambridge friend of Hugo Lamb in The Bone Clocks. Norah Grayer uses the name Chetwynd in 1988.
• The ghost of Rita Bishop mentions visiting Vyvyan Ayres (a composer in Cloud Atlas) in Zedelghem to DI Edmonds.
• Fern Penhaligon (ParaSoc member) is the sister of Jonny Pehaligon who, supposedly, commits suicide by driving his car off a cliff in The Bone Clocks.
• The blind mother of ParaSoc member, Todd Cosgrove, transcribes books into braille, including Crispin Hershey’s “Desiccated Embryos”, from The Bone Clocks.
• I expect ParaSoc members Lance Hardwick and Angelica Gibbons will crop up elsewhere, otherwise it was hardly worth naming them here.
• Freya Timms writes for Spyglass magazine, as did Luisa Rey in Cloud Atlas and Ed Brubeck (Holly’s husband) in The Bone Clocks.
• The Grayer twins studied The Shaded Way under a descendant of Abbot Enomoto (amongst others) from Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zeut.
• Norah Grayer will surely reappear: .
• “Might is Right” is quoted here and in Cloud Atlas.
This table from 2014 (before Slade House) is a touch spoilery, but it shows some of the main character connections:
The article containing this table: https://www.vulture.com/2014/08/david...
Rating 3.5*
I think this is probably a pretty good book of its kind (4*), but it's not really my kind of book, and I found much of the exposition too crass for my taste, even for light fiction. My 3* rating reflects my enjoyment, rather than anything more objective.
Quotes
• “Time is… Time was… Time is not.” On the clock without hands.
• “My body is dead but my soul is saved.”
• “Strangers are ‘They’, a lover is first a ‘You’ and then a ‘We’, but [twin] is one half of ‘I’.”
• “I hate her; but how far short it falls, this petty, neutered verb. Hatred is a thing one hosts; the lust I feel to harm, maim, wreck and kill this woman is less an emotion I hold than what I am now become.”
• “All the supernatural yarns need a realistic explanation and a supernatural one.”
(Mitchell only delivers the former, which is fine.)
UPDATE from November 2015
Mitchell has just won the World Fantasy award for The Bone Clocks. Handy timing for promoting this. Thanks to Apatt for sending me this link about the award and Mitchell's views about crossing genres:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
OLD Notes from January 2015
A new David Mitchell due out barely a year after The Bone Clocks, and set in the same universe. However, when TBC was published, he said the third of the Marinus trilogy was outlined, but wouldn't be published for a few years, so this may not be any closer to TBC than any of his others. Or not. Who knows?
It turns out that his 2,000 word Twitter story evolved, “scenes grew, bred and sprouted new scenes until ‘The Right Sort’ passed the 6,000 word mark and announced itself as part one of a five-part novel”. It's due out in time for Halloween:
https://www.hodder.co.uk/PressRelease...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/artsb...
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/bff-...
Here is the Twitter version, though I think I'd rather read the full novel first and then look back to see its source: https://twitter.com/SceptreBooks/time...
Rather like this book.
David Mitchell is usually shelved and sold alongside other writers of "Literary Fiction" (a label I dislike). He's twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and his novels often bulge with beautifully crafted images.
This is in a different mould; it's Mitchell having fun, and needs to be read as a much lighter confection in terms of style, though a rather darker one in terms of plot.
Slade House started as an experimental short story called “The Right Sort”, picking up on the psychsoterical section of The Bone Clocks, and published in tweets (https://twitter.com/SceptreBooks/time...). It took on a life of its own, and Mitchell expanded it into four more sections, creating Slade House.
Like many of his novels, this is a collection of connected short stories, with predacity as the underlying theme, here indicated by the Fox and Hounds (a chase game, a pub, a weapon, but most importantly, an analogy). In this case, there are five sections, nine years apart, starting in 1979, and ending TODAY - the day I finished reading it, and the day I am writing this review (31 October 2015)!
Each section is narrated by a person who visits the eponymous house, and each has a distinctive voice (a strong feature of all Mitchell’s works). The plots are less distinctive, but that’s no accident. Instead, there's hypnotic repetition to lure the reader into this mysterious world, and build expectations of what will happen to each visitor. The title page of each section has an illustration of a talismanic object.
1979, The Right Sort (small, black, iron door in a brick wall)
The narrator is Nathan Bishop, thirteen years old, on the autistic spectrum (as is one of Mitchell’s sons), and a synaesthete (“it’s a maroon-coloured name”). He and his mother, Rita, have been invited by Lady Norah Grayer to a recital at Slade House, on the last Saturday of October.
Nathan’s narrative style reminded me strongly of Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time: he mentions special numbers, describes his difficulty interpreting people, and his struggles to “act normal”. When he became preoccupied with a dead cat, I assumed a deliberate nod, though Schroedinger would also be apt. And then in the fourth chapter, “Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia… like Schroedinger’s Cat inside a box you can never open.”
There is an air of magic as soon as the Bishops enter the garden of Slade House through a small, black, iron door in the wall. Rita goes into the house and Nathan stays outside with a boy called Jonah who may or may not be Lady Grayer’s son. They play Fox and Hound, but Nathan gets dizzy and disoriented. He assumes it’s his mother’s Valium playing tricks on him, but things get more confused.
Standard creepy-house story fare: creaky stairs, a strange clock, an ethereal face at a window, oddly familiar portraits, disorientating visions, strangers who seem to know you, twins, a warning, a hypnotic candle…
1988, Shining Armour (a clock without hands)
This opens in the nearby Fox and Hounds pub and is narrated by racist, wife-beating Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds.
The investigation into the Bishops’ disappearance has been reopened because a widow cleaner called Fred Pink has woken from a nine-year coma and remembers seeing them going in. More than once, it’s stressed that the police want him to feel he’s being taken seriously (why?), even though they don’t think he has much credibility.
Nevertheless, it’s reason for DI Edmonds to visit Chloe Chetwynd at Slade House. It’s all sweetness and light… until it becomes disorienting (but rather familiar).
1997, Oink Oink (Tiffany compact and mirror)
A university ParaSoc (Paranormal Society) meet at the Fox and Hounds, before investigating the nearby Slade Alley vanishings. Cue justification for handy exposition and recap by Axel Hardwick, the group leader and nephew of Fred Pink.
This is the central chapter, numerically and plot-wise, but the characters are a checklist of student stereotypes that I found shallow and annoying. Even when writing for fun, Mitchell can do better than this.
The narrator is Sally Timms, born in 1979, a bulimic and insecure young woman, who was nicknamed “oink oink” by bullies at boarding school. She feels guilty about the fact her family’s money comes from oil, and is fond but jealous of her older sister, Freya, in New York. When Sally wanted to visit, Freya fobbed her off with a Tiffany compact.
They find Slade House is accommodation for overseas students sponsored by the Erasmus Institute, and a Halloween party is in full swing, hosted by Kate Childs. It’s all good fun… until it becomes disorienting (but familiar), though Sally assumes it’s because someone switched the labels as to which brownies were doped.
A pattern has been firmly developed, but
2006, You Dark Horse (silver hairpin with fox head)
Journalist Freya Timms (narrating) meets elderly Fred Pink at the Fox and Hounds, both feeling guilt for their family member who went missing nine years earlier. They share what they’ve found out. Fred knows a great deal about Norah and Jonah Grayer, telepathic twins in Edwardian/WW1 days, and about The Shaded Way, and other psychosoterica (cue for more, somewhat lazy exposition, causing ). Freya is sceptical but professional.
This is the fourth chapter; I’d relaxed into the pattern and style of the story, .
2015, Astronauts (ancient Ninevite candlestick with runic markings)
Norah Grayer is narrating, which is a bit of a surprise. She’s targeting Dr Iris Marinus, a Canadian psychologist who bought Fred Pink’s notebooks, and who is Engifted. Here, Mitchell lets rip with the psychsoterical mumbo-jumbo (see below) and plot fireworks too. I almost cheered at one point. But Mitchell never closes the doors behind him; there’s scope for much more in future books.
The Ethics of Immortality
“Did the pig whose smoked flesh you ate at breakfast ‘deserve’ her fate?”
“What’s a metalife without a mission? It’s mere feeding.”
The underlying situation in this world is, as in The Bone Clocks, two groups of immortals: The Anchorites who achieve it by killing, soul-stealing and hijacking bodies, and the Horologists, who are unwittingly reborn and ever on the trail of the evil Anchorites: “You murder for immorality… we are sentenced to it”.
“Might is Right is nature’s way… from such an array of vultures… from feudal lords to slave traders to oligarchs to neocons to predators like you. All of you strangle your consciences, and ethically you strike yourselves dumb.”
Occult Jargon
Mitchell has fun here. Most of the jargon is familiar to anyone who has read The Bone Clocks, but if not, it’s explained as much as it needs to be in the book.
“The orison’s imploding” … “Marinus, fast as thought, glyphed a concave mirrorfield”… “puts his left forefinger on our guest’s front chakra eye”… “a dying operandi… get the guest to the lacuna” … “psychovoltaic pauperdom”… and so on.
Short Glossary
Links to Other Mitchell Book
My reviews of all his books are on my mitchell-uber-book shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...
Everything Mitchell publishes has links to some of his other books; they’re part of an uber-novel, and as it’s more of a web than a line, it doesn’t much matter where you start. Slade House is explicitly related to The Bone Clocks, especially the penultimate chapter of TBC, where the battle between two tribes of immortals peaks. Other connections to Mitchell’s oeuvre include:
• Nathan is the same age as Jason Taylor in Black Swan Green and also a bit of misfit – though far more than Jason.
• The clock with words instead of hands has a “pale-as-bone clock face”.
• Chetwynd-Pitt is an unpleasant Cambridge friend of Hugo Lamb in The Bone Clocks. Norah Grayer uses the name Chetwynd in 1988.
• The ghost of Rita Bishop mentions visiting Vyvyan Ayres (a composer in Cloud Atlas) in Zedelghem to DI Edmonds.
• Fern Penhaligon (ParaSoc member) is the sister of Jonny Pehaligon who, supposedly, commits suicide by driving his car off a cliff in The Bone Clocks.
• The blind mother of ParaSoc member, Todd Cosgrove, transcribes books into braille, including Crispin Hershey’s “Desiccated Embryos”, from The Bone Clocks.
• I expect ParaSoc members Lance Hardwick and Angelica Gibbons will crop up elsewhere, otherwise it was hardly worth naming them here.
• Freya Timms writes for Spyglass magazine, as did Luisa Rey in Cloud Atlas and Ed Brubeck (Holly’s husband) in The Bone Clocks.
• The Grayer twins studied The Shaded Way under a descendant of Abbot Enomoto (amongst others) from Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zeut.
• Norah Grayer will surely reappear: .
• “Might is Right” is quoted here and in Cloud Atlas.
This table from 2014 (before Slade House) is a touch spoilery, but it shows some of the main character connections:
The article containing this table: https://www.vulture.com/2014/08/david...
Rating 3.5*
I think this is probably a pretty good book of its kind (4*), but it's not really my kind of book, and I found much of the exposition too crass for my taste, even for light fiction. My 3* rating reflects my enjoyment, rather than anything more objective.
Quotes
• “Time is… Time was… Time is not.” On the clock without hands.
• “My body is dead but my soul is saved.”
• “Strangers are ‘They’, a lover is first a ‘You’ and then a ‘We’, but [twin] is one half of ‘I’.”
• “I hate her; but how far short it falls, this petty, neutered verb. Hatred is a thing one hosts; the lust I feel to harm, maim, wreck and kill this woman is less an emotion I hold than what I am now become.”
• “All the supernatural yarns need a realistic explanation and a supernatural one.”
(Mitchell only delivers the former, which is fine.)
UPDATE from November 2015
Mitchell has just won the World Fantasy award for The Bone Clocks. Handy timing for promoting this. Thanks to Apatt for sending me this link about the award and Mitchell's views about crossing genres:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/book...
OLD Notes from January 2015
A new David Mitchell due out barely a year after The Bone Clocks, and set in the same universe. However, when TBC was published, he said the third of the Marinus trilogy was outlined, but wouldn't be published for a few years, so this may not be any closer to TBC than any of his others. Or not. Who knows?
It turns out that his 2,000 word Twitter story evolved, “scenes grew, bred and sprouted new scenes until ‘The Right Sort’ passed the 6,000 word mark and announced itself as part one of a five-part novel”. It's due out in time for Halloween:
https://www.hodder.co.uk/PressRelease...
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/artsb...
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/bff-...
Here is the Twitter version, though I think I'd rather read the full novel first and then look back to see its source: https://twitter.com/SceptreBooks/time...
August 5, 2015
David Mitchell does his usual thing of writing a few short stories, gluing them together, and calling it a novel. He gets away with it because he is just so extravagantly readable, and Slade House is no different – a hugely enjoyable ghost story which (I infer) seems to build on various conventions established in The Bone Clocks, which I haven't yet read.
The first story here is set in 1979, and subsequent chapters advance in nine-year intervals until we reach October 2015 – all of them first-person narratives which follow the same essential pattern and which involve the same creepy house in a run-down corner of London. I thought the first few sections were fantastic; after that, the penultimate chapter is really just a shameless infodump and the ending is – like most mysteries, I find – inevitably a little anticlimactic. But although I rarely find myself underlining Mitchell's sentences in aesthetic delight, I do love how wonderfully English his prose is, at a time when so many British authors seem to write with a kind of transatlantic blandness designed (or so I've cynically concluded) to be inoffensive to a US market. Here instead we have people that smell like Pritt-Stick and the sounds of the ‘Have I Got News For You’ theme tune.
This is really just a kind of literary amuse-bouche, and avid fans may find its slightness disappointing or unambitious. Personally, after what I've been reading recently, it was just a joy to have something brief and compelling that I could tear through in a day's commuting, and that had me stealing glimpses at my e-reader all day long at my desk.
The first story here is set in 1979, and subsequent chapters advance in nine-year intervals until we reach October 2015 – all of them first-person narratives which follow the same essential pattern and which involve the same creepy house in a run-down corner of London. I thought the first few sections were fantastic; after that, the penultimate chapter is really just a shameless infodump and the ending is – like most mysteries, I find – inevitably a little anticlimactic. But although I rarely find myself underlining Mitchell's sentences in aesthetic delight, I do love how wonderfully English his prose is, at a time when so many British authors seem to write with a kind of transatlantic blandness designed (or so I've cynically concluded) to be inoffensive to a US market. Here instead we have people that smell like Pritt-Stick and the sounds of the ‘Have I Got News For You’ theme tune.
This is really just a kind of literary amuse-bouche, and avid fans may find its slightness disappointing or unambitious. Personally, after what I've been reading recently, it was just a joy to have something brief and compelling that I could tear through in a day's commuting, and that had me stealing glimpses at my e-reader all day long at my desk.
October 8, 2019
One of my favorite creepy horror novels! Review first posted at www.fantasyliterature.com:
The enigmatic Slade House mysteriously appears every nine years for a day, like a sinister Brigadoon, accessible only to certain people. And those who visit it are never seen again. Some of the characters were particularly heart-wrenching, especially young Nathan, who is on the autistic spectrum, and Sally, the overweight young woman who is so hopeful and, at the same time, so desolate.
Although it seems at first like history is simply repeating itself every nine years, there are threads that tie each episode to the next, and a natural progression in the story line that moves the plot along and kept me tied to this book. Episodes that at first seem somewhat disconnected, if rather repetitive, begin to build on each other. Objects and characters creep in from prior episodes and echo prior appearances — a silver fox-head hairpin, a game of Fox and Hounds (distressingly apt) that also becomes a pub name — as well as from other Mitchell novels.
I’m not much of a horror reader, but occasionally I get tempted into it, this time because I enjoyed David Mitchell’s experimental and thought-provoking writing in Cloud Atlas so much. Slade House really sucked me in; I finished it in one day, a lot faster than I would’ve guessed at first, especially given my prior struggles with The Bone Clocks (which I put aside after about 75 pages when it failed to engage me). Slade House is much more accessible and easier to digest, not to mention far shorter. It works fine as a stand-alone read, although reading The Bone Clocks first would certainly give the reader a good deal of helpful background and context, since it’s set in the same universe. Readers of The Bone Clocks and other Mitchell novels will be rewarded with recurring characters, concepts and themes, such as Dr. Iris Marinus and the Horologists.
Even without that background knowledge, however, there’s enough explanation in Slade House that a reader new to this universe isn’t left feeling stranded. There’s a great deal of info-dumping in the 4th episode, which isn’t entirely successful in feeling like a natural part of the storyline, but it does provide the basic, necessary information about this universe that Mitchell has created.
Mitchell playfully includes several tropes of the haunted house genre: the disturbing portraits (which, honestly, have no logical place in Slade House, other than to raise the anxiety level of the reader), a face in the window, a warning that goes unheeded, the feeling of utter helplessness, the villain who can’t resist the urge to Explain All to his victim. I think Mitchell was also making a bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke with the quirkily named “Banjax,” the food or drink that the victims must voluntarily ingest for the villains to accomplish their purpose. But David Mitchell’s gift with prose puts Slade House a clear cut above most horror novels. It might even tempt me to give The Bone Clocks another shot.
Free copy of ebook received from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a review. Thanks!
Earlier post: I did go do a little background reading in some other reviews so as to understand some of the odd terminology, like Horologists, Atemporals and the Shaded Way. Ian's review was particularly helpful in explaining the background and terminology; I highly recommend it.
Even earlier post: Uh oh. NetGalley just approved me for this, and I barely realized that I really need to read The Bone Clocks first. I think it's finally time to go renew that expensive non-resident library card. I've got my October reading cut out for me. :p
The enigmatic Slade House mysteriously appears every nine years for a day, like a sinister Brigadoon, accessible only to certain people. And those who visit it are never seen again. Some of the characters were particularly heart-wrenching, especially young Nathan, who is on the autistic spectrum, and Sally, the overweight young woman who is so hopeful and, at the same time, so desolate.
Although it seems at first like history is simply repeating itself every nine years, there are threads that tie each episode to the next, and a natural progression in the story line that moves the plot along and kept me tied to this book. Episodes that at first seem somewhat disconnected, if rather repetitive, begin to build on each other. Objects and characters creep in from prior episodes and echo prior appearances — a silver fox-head hairpin, a game of Fox and Hounds (distressingly apt) that also becomes a pub name — as well as from other Mitchell novels.
I’m not much of a horror reader, but occasionally I get tempted into it, this time because I enjoyed David Mitchell’s experimental and thought-provoking writing in Cloud Atlas so much. Slade House really sucked me in; I finished it in one day, a lot faster than I would’ve guessed at first, especially given my prior struggles with The Bone Clocks (which I put aside after about 75 pages when it failed to engage me). Slade House is much more accessible and easier to digest, not to mention far shorter. It works fine as a stand-alone read, although reading The Bone Clocks first would certainly give the reader a good deal of helpful background and context, since it’s set in the same universe. Readers of The Bone Clocks and other Mitchell novels will be rewarded with recurring characters, concepts and themes, such as Dr. Iris Marinus and the Horologists.
Even without that background knowledge, however, there’s enough explanation in Slade House that a reader new to this universe isn’t left feeling stranded. There’s a great deal of info-dumping in the 4th episode, which isn’t entirely successful in feeling like a natural part of the storyline, but it does provide the basic, necessary information about this universe that Mitchell has created.
Mitchell playfully includes several tropes of the haunted house genre: the disturbing portraits (which, honestly, have no logical place in Slade House, other than to raise the anxiety level of the reader), a face in the window, a warning that goes unheeded, the feeling of utter helplessness, the villain who can’t resist the urge to Explain All to his victim. I think Mitchell was also making a bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke with the quirkily named “Banjax,” the food or drink that the victims must voluntarily ingest for the villains to accomplish their purpose. But David Mitchell’s gift with prose puts Slade House a clear cut above most horror novels. It might even tempt me to give The Bone Clocks another shot.
Free copy of ebook received from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a review. Thanks!
Earlier post: I did go do a little background reading in some other reviews so as to understand some of the odd terminology, like Horologists, Atemporals and the Shaded Way. Ian's review was particularly helpful in explaining the background and terminology; I highly recommend it.
Even earlier post: Uh oh. NetGalley just approved me for this, and I barely realized that I really need to read The Bone Clocks first. I think it's finally time to go renew that expensive non-resident library card. I've got my October reading cut out for me. :p
November 7, 2016
I picked up Slade House with the idea of reading something creepy and perhaps slightly unusual before Halloween. As it turned out, it was nightmarish and positively bizarre! I was mostly entertained while reading this, but as I now try to write my review, I realize that not much of this has stuck with me after a mere two weeks. Fortunately, this is not the kind of book that I want to examine too closely nor do I want to give much of it away to future readers. So, I’ll share just a few thoughts on this one.
Slade House, located in Slade Alley, is definitely the stuff of freaky dreams and Mitchell masterfully sketches a place that I would shrink from passing by even in the light of day. As described by one of its unfortunate young visitors, "Slade Alley’s the narrowest alley I’ve ever seen. It slices between two houses, then vanishes left after thirty paces or so… There’s a small black iron door, set into the brick wall. It’s small all right… It has no handle, keyhole, or gaps around the edges. It’s black, nothing-black, like the gaps between stars."
Every nine years, on the last day in October, one luckless guest will enter that door to find him or herself on the grounds of a stunning garden surrounding a grand mansion. What becomes of this guest… well, only the Grayer twins could tell you what really happens next.
I found the characters to be very well-drawn for such a short novel, always a big plus for me with any book. I enjoyed the gradual unveiling of the mystery behind the house and its history. While I didn’t find it to be super scary, on the edge of your seat kind of horror, it did have an uncanny surreal feel to it that made me squirm at times. However, by the end I found it to be a bit predictable and I started to grow tired of the story and the Grayer twins. I’m not a big fan of the supernatural and this was a bit of a mixed bag for me - a fun way to pass a couple of cold, rainy days, but not anything mind-blowing.
Slade House, located in Slade Alley, is definitely the stuff of freaky dreams and Mitchell masterfully sketches a place that I would shrink from passing by even in the light of day. As described by one of its unfortunate young visitors, "Slade Alley’s the narrowest alley I’ve ever seen. It slices between two houses, then vanishes left after thirty paces or so… There’s a small black iron door, set into the brick wall. It’s small all right… It has no handle, keyhole, or gaps around the edges. It’s black, nothing-black, like the gaps between stars."
Every nine years, on the last day in October, one luckless guest will enter that door to find him or herself on the grounds of a stunning garden surrounding a grand mansion. What becomes of this guest… well, only the Grayer twins could tell you what really happens next.
I found the characters to be very well-drawn for such a short novel, always a big plus for me with any book. I enjoyed the gradual unveiling of the mystery behind the house and its history. While I didn’t find it to be super scary, on the edge of your seat kind of horror, it did have an uncanny surreal feel to it that made me squirm at times. However, by the end I found it to be a bit predictable and I started to grow tired of the story and the Grayer twins. I’m not a big fan of the supernatural and this was a bit of a mixed bag for me - a fun way to pass a couple of cold, rainy days, but not anything mind-blowing.
August 11, 2017
A Cursed Eternity, Soul Eaters, Dark Cult, Gifted Characters & A Lacuna.
You can clearly hear a X-Files Theme playing here..
Five Stories, One House.
A mysterious Black Iron door appears to you out of high brick walled alley, only on a certain day every 9 years..
Step inside ,for your own good, with your totally free will..for a purpose you already planned days,if not years ago..
Step inside, aha here you are, the back garden of this marble white beautiful house..every thing's vivid..
You may eat something,like this ripe red beautiful cherry. Poor you..you're gifted no doubt, that's why you're here in the first place, you know? But no matter what, you can't just resist eating or drinking something..
Now you did, you'll start hallucinating, you'll feel being stuck in a bizarre situations.. Run, for God's sakes just Run..
Oh poor poor you, you made it...you run for your life….you made it...now welcome welcome to;
The Slade House..
A Fun read,but I should,better, have read The Bone Clock first…
may be that's why I canceled the 4th star rating, you know what it feels when you read a Batman story and when Batman almost save the day comes Superman to take all the credit?
It's Horror that got its fine share of hallucinations and tricks, very sophisticated language and very dark myths of an occult.
Or rather as the author described a night among the story ;
I will try to rate each story till get to the final rate...yet with no spoiler as possible..
Our first Guest in this book is Nathan Bishop, a sweet smart yet autistic, 13 years old..and his mother, invited to the Slade House for a big break for the musician mother.
I really loved Nathan, and how the author got into his mind, writing a story narrating by autistic was brilliant, and Nathan was really smart, and sweet.
It was a bit hard for me to follow at first, I had to re-read many lines to get it.-add to that the very hard classical language for me-
And when finally I used to his narrating...the story ends..weird starting yet full of mysteries to come.. but I didn't like the story much, seemed too bizarre specially the weird ending.
Our second guest is a Detective investigating the re-open of the Bishops disappearance case, due to a witness who's awakened from a 9 years coma and last thing he remembers is seeing them in Slade Alley.
The Inspector finds the Slade House when others never found it before, meets the owner, a pretty young widow..and involves with her in an affair..
With almost the same techniques and theme of the previous story it's started to be a bit boring for me, some answers here but more questions as well.
A group of 6 young collage students interested in the paranormal phenomenons “X-File-ers” with a leader related to the same witness of the Bishops in Slade Alley, gathered to investigate The Slade House Mystery.. and when they arrive there,they find out it just a House for students who's having a Halloween party..
the narrator is a bit fat girl ‘Sally Timms’ who have some issues with her sister and loneliness. , I loved how the author makes you feel for her and enter her mind, her wanting to be loved, to be normal , to not be rejected..
The story this time is a bit better, more bizarre scenes and more related to the previous stories.
But that was lost to the predicted way of the story plot... I almost start to feel very bored with repeating the whole trick, or at least I already predicted it.
And I have to say till this far of the novel the vocabulary is really really hard to follow, as someone referred here, it's so British, so sophisticated in every chapter.
Specially when a big part of secret of the House and the Twins is revealed in this chapter, it gets more difficult -may be not that perfect in reading English novels that's why it was my first encounter with ‘Lacuna’-
And that may have made all the novel deserves a higher rate… finally we get the full back story of the Twins and their extraordinary power, the Dark Secrets in Marrakesh and those dark cults.
This back story completes what has started in the previous one. and it r's very good written.
And also the Narrator here is very related to the previous story..and the other character here is the mostly connecting the all 3 stories.
I won't spoil it for you but really this one is what made all the difference and the worth of the reading this part Sci-Fi part Myth story.. sorry , stories..
I really loved how they altered the same trick in more tricky way which was the most nightmarish of all to me.
I just Love it...
And then came the final story , or the one after the whole mystery died by the 4th story.
The ending story with a HUGE alternating to the plot, narrating and the tricks.
I like it, but didn't appreciate it enough.. since here is where you feel ,I must have read The Bone Clock before.. many elements directly referred to the plot of the previous book, elements that totally necessarily to end the story perfectly.
as I said about Batman story.
That's why I felt a bit disappointed , I really don't mind that but may be a little alerting would have been better, I love when an author anyway try to make his different novels in one universe ,and funny that most of the reviews I read stated that they didn't read The Bone Clock too , but It's my very first read for Mr. David Mitchell...and won't be the last..
And the most important point that the novel's morality is clear and fine and the ending main plot is perfect.
Funny that I was intending to rate it plain 3, but when I thought more of it it's may be 3.5 , but while writing the review it's just 4...nostalgic may be, but I will make the 4 when I read The Bone Clock if it make it to 4 ‘or higher’..then Slade House will totally deserve its 4.
and after all,as I said at the beginning..it's a real fun read., just don't you dare enter any mysterious Black Iron Door in any high brick walled alleys...specially when it's only appearing in a certain time..
Mohammed Arabey
From 8 February 2016
To 13 February 2016
______________________
PS: -the pre-review
The beautiful House picture here is from “The Boy”, a movie I watched with Mom & Sis at the same day I began Slade House, Since Mom was missing watching English movies in the cinema & interested in this one. The Boy. well, it was fun,well plotted,decent twist,creepy doll boy AND ANOTHER CREEPY HOUSE..
It's my year of the Houses.. since I find out that the house in the movie played a big part too. As well as houses was at most of this year's reads so far..
I'll be houses reviewer I guess :)
My first and hopefully won't be last read for Mr. David Mitchell :) with my signed limited edition copy :))
You can clearly hear a X-Files Theme playing here..
Five Stories, One House.
A mysterious Black Iron door appears to you out of high brick walled alley, only on a certain day every 9 years..
Step inside ,for your own good, with your totally free will..for a purpose you already planned days,if not years ago..
Step inside, aha here you are, the back garden of this marble white beautiful house..every thing's vivid..
You may eat something,like this ripe red beautiful cherry. Poor you..you're gifted no doubt, that's why you're here in the first place, you know? But no matter what, you can't just resist eating or drinking something..
Now you did, you'll start hallucinating, you'll feel being stuck in a bizarre situations.. Run, for God's sakes just Run..
Oh poor poor you, you made it...you run for your life….you made it...now welcome welcome to;
The Slade House..
A Fun read,but I should,better, have read The Bone Clock first…
may be that's why I canceled the 4th star rating, you know what it feels when you read a Batman story and when Batman almost save the day comes Superman to take all the credit?
It's Horror that got its fine share of hallucinations and tricks, very sophisticated language and very dark myths of an occult.
Or rather as the author described a night among the story ;
“It feels like a board game co-designed by M. C. Escher on a bender and Stephen King in a fever.”
I will try to rate each story till get to the final rate...yet with no spoiler as possible..
The Right Sort 1979 (2.5 Stars)
**********************
Our first Guest in this book is Nathan Bishop, a sweet smart yet autistic, 13 years old..and his mother, invited to the Slade House for a big break for the musician mother.
I really loved Nathan, and how the author got into his mind, writing a story narrating by autistic was brilliant, and Nathan was really smart, and sweet.
It was a bit hard for me to follow at first, I had to re-read many lines to get it.-add to that the very hard classical language for me-
And when finally I used to his narrating...the story ends..weird starting yet full of mysteries to come.. but I didn't like the story much, seemed too bizarre specially the weird ending.
Shining Armour 1988 (2 Stars)
*******************
Our second guest is a Detective investigating the re-open of the Bishops disappearance case, due to a witness who's awakened from a 9 years coma and last thing he remembers is seeing them in Slade Alley.
The Inspector finds the Slade House when others never found it before, meets the owner, a pretty young widow..and involves with her in an affair..
With almost the same techniques and theme of the previous story it's started to be a bit boring for me, some answers here but more questions as well.
Oink Oink 1997 (3.5 Stars)
*******************
A group of 6 young collage students interested in the paranormal phenomenons “X-File-ers” with a leader related to the same witness of the Bishops in Slade Alley, gathered to investigate The Slade House Mystery.. and when they arrive there,they find out it just a House for students who's having a Halloween party..
the narrator is a bit fat girl ‘Sally Timms’ who have some issues with her sister and loneliness. , I loved how the author makes you feel for her and enter her mind, her wanting to be loved, to be normal , to not be rejected..
The story this time is a bit better, more bizarre scenes and more related to the previous stories.
But that was lost to the predicted way of the story plot... I almost start to feel very bored with repeating the whole trick, or at least I already predicted it.
And I have to say till this far of the novel the vocabulary is really really hard to follow, as someone referred here, it's so British, so sophisticated in every chapter.
Specially when a big part of secret of the House and the Twins is revealed in this chapter, it gets more difficult -may be not that perfect in reading English novels that's why it was my first encounter with ‘Lacuna’-
You Dark Horse You 2006 (4.5 Stars)
*******************
And that may have made all the novel deserves a higher rate… finally we get the full back story of the Twins and their extraordinary power, the Dark Secrets in Marrakesh and those dark cults.
This back story completes what has started in the previous one. and it r's very good written.
And also the Narrator here is very related to the previous story..and the other character here is the mostly connecting the all 3 stories.
I won't spoil it for you but really this one is what made all the difference and the worth of the reading this part Sci-Fi part Myth story.. sorry , stories..
I really loved how they altered the same trick in more tricky way which was the most nightmarish of all to me.
I just Love it...
And then came the final story , or the one after the whole mystery died by the 4th story.
Astronauts 2015 (3.5 Stars)
*******************
The ending story with a HUGE alternating to the plot, narrating and the tricks.
I like it, but didn't appreciate it enough.. since here is where you feel ,I must have read The Bone Clock before.. many elements directly referred to the plot of the previous book, elements that totally necessarily to end the story perfectly.
as I said about Batman story.
That's why I felt a bit disappointed , I really don't mind that but may be a little alerting would have been better, I love when an author anyway try to make his different novels in one universe ,and funny that most of the reviews I read stated that they didn't read The Bone Clock too , but It's my very first read for Mr. David Mitchell...and won't be the last..
And the most important point that the novel's morality is clear and fine and the ending main plot is perfect.
Funny that I was intending to rate it plain 3, but when I thought more of it it's may be 3.5 , but while writing the review it's just 4...nostalgic may be, but I will make the 4 when I read The Bone Clock if it make it to 4 ‘or higher’..then Slade House will totally deserve its 4.
and after all,as I said at the beginning..it's a real fun read., just don't you dare enter any mysterious Black Iron Door in any high brick walled alleys...specially when it's only appearing in a certain time..
Mohammed Arabey
From 8 February 2016
To 13 February 2016
______________________
PS: -the pre-review
The beautiful House picture here is from “The Boy”, a movie I watched with Mom & Sis at the same day I began Slade House, Since Mom was missing watching English movies in the cinema & interested in this one. The Boy. well, it was fun,well plotted,decent twist,creepy doll boy AND ANOTHER CREEPY HOUSE..
It's my year of the Houses.. since I find out that the house in the movie played a big part too. As well as houses was at most of this year's reads so far..
I'll be houses reviewer I guess :)
My first and hopefully won't be last read for Mr. David Mitchell :) with my signed limited edition copy :))
June 16, 2019
Well played Mr. Mitchell, well played.
Mitchell’s October 2015 publication (just in time and thematically relevant to Halloween) is a modern addition to a list of great October titles.
Styling a series of first person connected but stand alone chapters into a seamless narrative, Mitchell has crafted a story that slowly grips the reader until the last few pages in this short novel fly by as the reader is unable to put the book down.
Slade House is set in a quiet suburban neighborhood in England, albeit in a narrow and creepy alley, and provides some fun twists to an old haunted house theme. The “ghosts” in this paranormal horror / fantasy have some added occult significance provided by Mitchell, with a backstory that gets slowly delivered to the reader as the years and opportunities to haunt roll by.
I have yet to read The Bone Clocks, but apparently this story follows that theme (and makes me want to read Mitchell’s 2014 publication). More Gaiman and Mieville than Bradbury, this is a postmodern and sophisticated fantasy with strong horror elements.
An entertaining and engaging page turner.
Mitchell’s October 2015 publication (just in time and thematically relevant to Halloween) is a modern addition to a list of great October titles.
Styling a series of first person connected but stand alone chapters into a seamless narrative, Mitchell has crafted a story that slowly grips the reader until the last few pages in this short novel fly by as the reader is unable to put the book down.
Slade House is set in a quiet suburban neighborhood in England, albeit in a narrow and creepy alley, and provides some fun twists to an old haunted house theme. The “ghosts” in this paranormal horror / fantasy have some added occult significance provided by Mitchell, with a backstory that gets slowly delivered to the reader as the years and opportunities to haunt roll by.
I have yet to read The Bone Clocks, but apparently this story follows that theme (and makes me want to read Mitchell’s 2014 publication). More Gaiman and Mieville than Bradbury, this is a postmodern and sophisticated fantasy with strong horror elements.
An entertaining and engaging page turner.
November 7, 2015
2.5 stars
I wish to thank Net Galley, Random House and author David Mitchell for the privilege of reading an ARC of Slade House in exchange for an unbiased review.
This is my first David Mitchell read, and I will probably leave it at that. I basically had a hard time connecting with this book. If I hadn’t been involved in a buddy read with my good friend, I would have stopped after the first chapter. She encouraged me though, and I made it to the end.
I did like some aspects of this read. The storyline was fairly interesting and there were a few surprises along the way. I liked that the 5 chapters were all presented as individual stories, each from a different first person narrator, with them all slowly coming together as the novel moved along. I also really liked a few of the characters.
Furthermore, there was a spot of humor here and there, which I appreciated.
On the flip side, there were bigger things I didn’t care for. The narrative lost me on several occasions. There were parts, especially in the first chapter, where I had no idea what the author was talking about. These sections were real flow stoppers for me. At other points, especially in chapter 3, it was tough knowing what was real and what wasn’t. I suppose a good number of readers would like this, but I found it confusing and led me to reread paragraphs—again interfering with the flow.
At one point, I actually stopped to look up other books by Mr. Mitchell and found very mixed reviews. Some very intelligent reviewers found his writing convoluted and reading the book actual work, which made me feel better, though one Goodreads friend told me Slade House is less complex than some of his earlier books (which didn’t make me feel better).
I was disappointed that it wasn’t all that creepy or suspenseful to me.
There were some points of real unbelievability in this story. Yes, I know. This is horror/fantasy/science fiction, but even in those realms, you have to follow some rules. I never like to go into plot points in my reviews so those that like approaching books cold can still do so; therefore, no details from me. Suffice to say a major occurrence critical to the ending was hard to accept as was the very end itself. This is all, of course, only my humble opinion. Hey, my mind is sciency, and I guess it has its limits on what is acceptable in fantasy/science fiction and what crosses the line into total implausibility.
I am clearly not a big fan of Slade House, BUT, and this is a big but—I do not want anyone to take my word on whether this book is for you or not. A lot of early readers have loved it, and I fully expect to be in the minority on this one. So if you are into this type of book, go for it, and I hope you enjoy. It was just not written for me.
I wish to thank Net Galley, Random House and author David Mitchell for the privilege of reading an ARC of Slade House in exchange for an unbiased review.
This is my first David Mitchell read, and I will probably leave it at that. I basically had a hard time connecting with this book. If I hadn’t been involved in a buddy read with my good friend, I would have stopped after the first chapter. She encouraged me though, and I made it to the end.
I did like some aspects of this read. The storyline was fairly interesting and there were a few surprises along the way. I liked that the 5 chapters were all presented as individual stories, each from a different first person narrator, with them all slowly coming together as the novel moved along. I also really liked a few of the characters.
Furthermore, there was a spot of humor here and there, which I appreciated.
On the flip side, there were bigger things I didn’t care for. The narrative lost me on several occasions. There were parts, especially in the first chapter, where I had no idea what the author was talking about. These sections were real flow stoppers for me. At other points, especially in chapter 3, it was tough knowing what was real and what wasn’t. I suppose a good number of readers would like this, but I found it confusing and led me to reread paragraphs—again interfering with the flow.
At one point, I actually stopped to look up other books by Mr. Mitchell and found very mixed reviews. Some very intelligent reviewers found his writing convoluted and reading the book actual work, which made me feel better, though one Goodreads friend told me Slade House is less complex than some of his earlier books (which didn’t make me feel better).
I was disappointed that it wasn’t all that creepy or suspenseful to me.
There were some points of real unbelievability in this story. Yes, I know. This is horror/fantasy/science fiction, but even in those realms, you have to follow some rules. I never like to go into plot points in my reviews so those that like approaching books cold can still do so; therefore, no details from me. Suffice to say a major occurrence critical to the ending was hard to accept as was the very end itself. This is all, of course, only my humble opinion. Hey, my mind is sciency, and I guess it has its limits on what is acceptable in fantasy/science fiction and what crosses the line into total implausibility.
I am clearly not a big fan of Slade House, BUT, and this is a big but—I do not want anyone to take my word on whether this book is for you or not. A lot of early readers have loved it, and I fully expect to be in the minority on this one. So if you are into this type of book, go for it, and I hope you enjoy. It was just not written for me.
September 16, 2015
Magically (and creepily) delicious. Loved every minute of this one, just wish I has read it closer to Halloween. Not overtly scary, yet what is accomplished in this short novel did send a few shivers my way. So many lines can be taken in more than one way, little humorous tidbits scattered here and there. A haunted house but so much more, original and brilliant in its own way. Actually this will make a good book for re-reading, which is just what I will do.
ARC from publisher.
ARC from publisher.
October 17, 2016
4.5 stars
...I'd scream if I could but I can't my chest's full of molten panic it's choking me choking it's wolves it's winter it's bones it's cartilage skin liver lungs it's Hunger it's Hunger it's Hunger and Run!
A delightful romp into the creepy, ghostly, occult world of David Mitchell.
Slade House, a ghostly entity/vision/trap which is manned by malicious, parasitic twins, is open one day every nine years, to a special "guest" who is lured into this hologram world, constructed in order to attract and entice until the twin spiders have their juicy prey caught in their web. Each prey is a very well developed, believable character, brought to the house in different ways, for varying reasons. As you learn more about the ways of Slade House, you want to scream warnings, but in vain - suddenly you remember it's a book and it will go along its inevitable course. Each chapter is nine years apart from the next. The tension mounts with every layer.
I hear this is "diet David Mitchell" fare, much less complex than his other books. I loved it though, and I'll seek out his other works now. Perhaps this book is a sort of Slade House: I have been brought in and now am helpless and at the mercy of his talent.
...I'd scream if I could but I can't my chest's full of molten panic it's choking me choking it's wolves it's winter it's bones it's cartilage skin liver lungs it's Hunger it's Hunger it's Hunger and Run!
A delightful romp into the creepy, ghostly, occult world of David Mitchell.
Slade House, a ghostly entity/vision/trap which is manned by malicious, parasitic twins, is open one day every nine years, to a special "guest" who is lured into this hologram world, constructed in order to attract and entice until the twin spiders have their juicy prey caught in their web. Each prey is a very well developed, believable character, brought to the house in different ways, for varying reasons. As you learn more about the ways of Slade House, you want to scream warnings, but in vain - suddenly you remember it's a book and it will go along its inevitable course. Each chapter is nine years apart from the next. The tension mounts with every layer.
I hear this is "diet David Mitchell" fare, much less complex than his other books. I loved it though, and I'll seek out his other works now. Perhaps this book is a sort of Slade House: I have been brought in and now am helpless and at the mercy of his talent.
September 19, 2015
I enjoyed the way this story started in the first chapter with 13 year old Nathan. He is
sweet- sensitive- autistic --( the type of boy other kids would make fun of at school),
Plus his mum is newly divorced, popping Valium like gum- drops.
Then jumping ahead...Nathan's mother, Rita, find the house off Slade Alley. Rita, being a piano player, gets invited to performs for well-known guests including Yehudi Menuhin. It was a street person
just passing by who helped them through an iron door - finding the house of Lady Grayer.
It gets spooky - when after October 1979 the mother and son were never seen again.
Nine years later detective Gordon Edmonds enters the same way... He also is never seen again.
Every Nine years there is another disappearance last Saturday in October.
Yikes almighty ... This one-sitting read gets scary-creepy-and if you never believed in ghosts
before... you might after you read "The Slade House".
Thank You Random House, Netgalley, and David Mitchell for the opportunity to read this
spine-tingling book.
sweet- sensitive- autistic --( the type of boy other kids would make fun of at school),
Plus his mum is newly divorced, popping Valium like gum- drops.
Then jumping ahead...Nathan's mother, Rita, find the house off Slade Alley. Rita, being a piano player, gets invited to performs for well-known guests including Yehudi Menuhin. It was a street person
just passing by who helped them through an iron door - finding the house of Lady Grayer.
It gets spooky - when after October 1979 the mother and son were never seen again.
Nine years later detective Gordon Edmonds enters the same way... He also is never seen again.
Every Nine years there is another disappearance last Saturday in October.
Yikes almighty ... This one-sitting read gets scary-creepy-and if you never believed in ghosts
before... you might after you read "The Slade House".
Thank You Random House, Netgalley, and David Mitchell for the opportunity to read this
spine-tingling book.
August 5, 2019
“To follow [the] trail of breadcrumbs you have to blindfold your own sanity…”
Wow, what a ride! David Mitchell’s Slade House came running round the bend, no pun intended (well, maybe just a little for those who have read it), at full steam ahead with all of the mechanical makings and suspenseful trappings of a haunting psychological thrill ride. It had a rhythmic flow that you could fall into, but beware. That trap has thorns. And fangs.
“…but as I watch, the running-boy shape gets fuzzier and becomes a growling darkness with darker eyes, eyes that know me, and fangs that’ll finish what they started and it’s pounding after me in sickening slow motion, big as a cantering horse and I’d scream if I could but I can’t my chest’s full of molten panic it’s choking me choking…if I fall it’ll have me, and I’ve only got moments left and I stumble up the steps and grip the doorknob turn please turn it’s stuck no no no…it’s ridged does it turn yes no yes no twist pull push pull turn twist I’m falling forwards…”
Slade House is the tale of a mystical house in London, that can only be found if you know just where—and when—to look: just a skip from the ratty Fox and Hounds pub, down the alley too dark and narrow for “a properly fat person…[to] get past someone coming the other way.” There you’ll find a little iron door, so small you’d have to stoop to go through it, embedded in the side of the wall. You’ll wonder how you missed it when you first walked by. Was it there before? Are you imagining it now? Inside you’ll find a paradise to your liking: a beautiful woman, the career opportunity of a lifetime, a raging kegger, whatever you fancy. But once inside, there’s no turning back because, as we all know, the house always wins.
The format worked well for this one, using a series of vignettes, all nine years apart, to weave together the haunting mystery of Slade House and the experiences of those who dared to enter those walls—all linked soul-to-soul if not hand-in-hand. Their experiences in Slade House overlap in the most disconcerting and sinister of ways. Each character is eventually and inevitably interlaced into the experiences of the other vignettes, and subtle sequences tie it all together with an eerie thread of déja vu like a finger down the spine of your back.
Mitchell’s Slade House was Hill House meets The Skeleton Key, if you’ve ever seen that movie. An enchanted experience woven by a true magician, because now you see it; now you don’t. It was absolutely cinematic, and once the novel had you in its clutches, it was quite the thrill ride, building suspense in a way that made you grasp the pages and say, “No, that is not happening—oh, my God, is that about to happen!” (Well, it did for me, anyways. ;) The premise of this novel was divine and the execution of it near-perfect.
However—oh yes, I’ve got to hit it with the “however—” I couldn’t give this one 5 stars.
Of course, you’re asking, “Why’d you steal Slade’s star?” And the answer, simply put, is cop-out. I haven’t seen cop-out revelations like that since middle-school writing, at least, I’m sorry to say. The short explanatory monologues spoiled it for me a little, pulling me out of this world of ghostly mystique and foreboding just to dowse me in annoyance before inserting me back into the plot. I loathe when pro/antagonists practically leap out of character to deliver stilted, unrealistic dialogues amongst themselves, explaining things (to the reader) that they, themselves, would already know! Case in point, under what circumstance would it ever be okay to turn to your sister and say:
Umm, no. Never! Never ever! Creative Writing 101—hell, Reader 101! That totally killed the mood of mounting suspense for me, and I was definitely peeved to find that I could expect this at the end of every. single. vignette. Then there were the annoying explanations that the narrator gave for why protagonists did what they did, such as, “Vodafone must have begun upgrading their network after Avril’s texts arrived” (to explain why a call didn’t go through at an eerie time, ect.) I’m basically positive that that’s why the page count is so low on this one—cop-out wrap-ups that didn’t require the time or word count to really flesh out these seemingly minor makings of the novel that can never go forgotten about, that can never be faked or rushed.
So, think of Slade House as a thrill ride with bumpy turns. If those had been smoothed at the edges and fleshed out with the same brilliant strokes of writing as the kaleidoscope of fun-house horrors—the effortless illustration of Slade House and all of its haunting hallways and staircases, rose gardens and phantom occurrences—this definitely would have earned back its stolen star. Still, I’d definitely recommend this read for anyone who dares to stoop through that doorway and enter Slade House. The taste of the pros is definitely worth eating the cons—you know, like a good bag of popcorn or potato chips. But reader beware: this book has bite. 4 stars. ****
FOLLOW ME HERE:
Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency
Wow, what a ride! David Mitchell’s Slade House came running round the bend, no pun intended (well, maybe just a little for those who have read it), at full steam ahead with all of the mechanical makings and suspenseful trappings of a haunting psychological thrill ride. It had a rhythmic flow that you could fall into, but beware. That trap has thorns. And fangs.
“…but as I watch, the running-boy shape gets fuzzier and becomes a growling darkness with darker eyes, eyes that know me, and fangs that’ll finish what they started and it’s pounding after me in sickening slow motion, big as a cantering horse and I’d scream if I could but I can’t my chest’s full of molten panic it’s choking me choking…if I fall it’ll have me, and I’ve only got moments left and I stumble up the steps and grip the doorknob turn please turn it’s stuck no no no…it’s ridged does it turn yes no yes no twist pull push pull turn twist I’m falling forwards…”
Slade House is the tale of a mystical house in London, that can only be found if you know just where—and when—to look: just a skip from the ratty Fox and Hounds pub, down the alley too dark and narrow for “a properly fat person…[to] get past someone coming the other way.” There you’ll find a little iron door, so small you’d have to stoop to go through it, embedded in the side of the wall. You’ll wonder how you missed it when you first walked by. Was it there before? Are you imagining it now? Inside you’ll find a paradise to your liking: a beautiful woman, the career opportunity of a lifetime, a raging kegger, whatever you fancy. But once inside, there’s no turning back because, as we all know, the house always wins.
The format worked well for this one, using a series of vignettes, all nine years apart, to weave together the haunting mystery of Slade House and the experiences of those who dared to enter those walls—all linked soul-to-soul if not hand-in-hand. Their experiences in Slade House overlap in the most disconcerting and sinister of ways. Each character is eventually and inevitably interlaced into the experiences of the other vignettes, and subtle sequences tie it all together with an eerie thread of déja vu like a finger down the spine of your back.
Mitchell’s Slade House was Hill House meets The Skeleton Key, if you’ve ever seen that movie. An enchanted experience woven by a true magician, because now you see it; now you don’t. It was absolutely cinematic, and once the novel had you in its clutches, it was quite the thrill ride, building suspense in a way that made you grasp the pages and say, “No, that is not happening—oh, my God, is that about to happen!” (Well, it did for me, anyways. ;) The premise of this novel was divine and the execution of it near-perfect.
However—oh yes, I’ve got to hit it with the “however—” I couldn’t give this one 5 stars.
Of course, you’re asking, “Why’d you steal Slade’s star?” And the answer, simply put, is cop-out. I haven’t seen cop-out revelations like that since middle-school writing, at least
Umm, no. Never! Never ever! Creative Writing 101—hell, Reader 101! That totally killed the mood of mounting suspense for me, and I was definitely peeved to find that I could expect this at the end of every. single. vignette. Then there were the annoying explanations that the narrator gave for why protagonists did what they did, such as, “Vodafone must have begun upgrading their network after Avril’s texts arrived” (to explain why a call didn’t go through at an eerie time, ect.) I’m basically positive that that’s why the page count is so low on this one—cop-out wrap-ups that didn’t require the time or word count to really flesh out these seemingly minor makings of the novel that can never go forgotten about, that can never be faked or rushed.
So, think of Slade House as a thrill ride with bumpy turns. If those had been smoothed at the edges and fleshed out with the same brilliant strokes of writing as the kaleidoscope of fun-house horrors—the effortless illustration of Slade House and all of its haunting hallways and staircases, rose gardens and phantom occurrences—this definitely would have earned back its stolen star. Still, I’d definitely recommend this read for anyone who dares to stoop through that doorway and enter Slade House. The taste of the pros is definitely worth eating the cons—you know, like a good bag of popcorn or potato chips. But reader beware: this book has bite. 4 stars. ****
FOLLOW ME HERE:
Art + Deco Agency Book Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Art + Deco Publishing Agency
September 23, 2016
Entertaining if a bit predictable. Basically a shorter version of The Bone Clocks starring the ubiquitous Dr Marinus and featuring various other characters from other Mitchell novels. For me this joke/motif is beginning to wear thin. Essentially this is light entertainment rather than literature. And begs the question, what has happened to Mitchell’s ambition? Has he already peaked with Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns? This, rather like the Bone Clocks, felt like he was going through the motions, having fun but not challenging himself. Worryingly he’s prepared the terrain for a sequel. I’ve also heard there’s going to be a sequel to A Thousand Autumns, a serious book with an undertow of whimsy; you sense the sequel will be a whimsical book with an undertow of seriousness. Personally I’ve now had quite enough of the whimsy of Dr Marinus and the Horologists. I’ve never read Harry Potter but I suspect Rowling is much better at this stuff than Mitchell.
August 15, 2015
Quite a fun read, one that shouldn’t be spoiled by reading anything substantial about its contents. But it takes more than platitudes and blurbs to help a potential reader decide whether to pursue reading this book.
If you are a Mitchell fan like me, you can gladly reach for it. I could hardly put it down. Many of you were disappointed in the break into fantasy- land at the end of “The Bone Clocks”. I would say that the apparent clash of genres won’t be a problem here. With this short novel (around 150 pages), you are consistently in a world where the dangers of the people known as the Atemporals are alive in each chapter.
As you may not have read “The Bone Clocks” (and do not have to read that first), I won’t say what dangers to your soul or body you may be facing though characters. These are diverse and lively folk of contemporary London, chock full of personality (tragically so for some who meet a nasty fate). I can also say that Mitchell follows his frequent pattern of using narrative segments that skip through time. He also keeps with his affinity for structured variations along his narrative arc. Not so intricate this time on their paths. Instead his jazz of variation lies with the characters made to fit an apparently common form.
Mitchell was such a genre chameleon in his fabulous “Cloud Atlas” that it made me dizzy. Here he plays with the tropes of gothic horror and fantasy with modern twists in the league of Gaiman and Mieville. It was delightful to me to be constantly feeling a kind of déjà vu, wondering what each particular situation reminded me of. He’s not stealing, as he uses indirect references to tune you in. Sometimes it feels like Poe with elements from Harry Potter, then somewhere between “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Truman Show”, but eventually I wondered whether the theme is from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” or the song “Hotel California” with Escher designing the layout.
That sense of being on a stage with a script takes away from the scariness that classic horror tales try to evoke. But there was plenty of wrenching of my emotions and my mind. Is it all in good fun, or is there a serious world view here? A clock with no hands has a plaque with the lines: “Time is/Time was/Time is not.” Maybe reading this can help you figure that out for me. No, don’t tell me—I like to let it sit mystically like a Zen koan. Something to meditate on while I stay tuned to see how Mitchell will fulfill his expressed agenda of making all his books into parts of one big über-novel.
This book was provided as a e-book loan through the Netgalley ARC program, due out around Halloween.
If you are a Mitchell fan like me, you can gladly reach for it. I could hardly put it down. Many of you were disappointed in the break into fantasy- land at the end of “The Bone Clocks”. I would say that the apparent clash of genres won’t be a problem here. With this short novel (around 150 pages), you are consistently in a world where the dangers of the people known as the Atemporals are alive in each chapter.
As you may not have read “The Bone Clocks” (and do not have to read that first), I won’t say what dangers to your soul or body you may be facing though characters. These are diverse and lively folk of contemporary London, chock full of personality (tragically so for some who meet a nasty fate). I can also say that Mitchell follows his frequent pattern of using narrative segments that skip through time. He also keeps with his affinity for structured variations along his narrative arc. Not so intricate this time on their paths. Instead his jazz of variation lies with the characters made to fit an apparently common form.
Mitchell was such a genre chameleon in his fabulous “Cloud Atlas” that it made me dizzy. Here he plays with the tropes of gothic horror and fantasy with modern twists in the league of Gaiman and Mieville. It was delightful to me to be constantly feeling a kind of déjà vu, wondering what each particular situation reminded me of. He’s not stealing, as he uses indirect references to tune you in. Sometimes it feels like Poe with elements from Harry Potter, then somewhere between “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Truman Show”, but eventually I wondered whether the theme is from “The Picture of Dorian Gray” or the song “Hotel California” with Escher designing the layout.
That sense of being on a stage with a script takes away from the scariness that classic horror tales try to evoke. But there was plenty of wrenching of my emotions and my mind. Is it all in good fun, or is there a serious world view here? A clock with no hands has a plaque with the lines: “Time is/Time was/Time is not.” Maybe reading this can help you figure that out for me. No, don’t tell me—I like to let it sit mystically like a Zen koan. Something to meditate on while I stay tuned to see how Mitchell will fulfill his expressed agenda of making all his books into parts of one big über-novel.
This book was provided as a e-book loan through the Netgalley ARC program, due out around Halloween.
October 31, 2015
Tweet! Tweet!
"Slade House" grew out of David Mitchell's Oulipean project in which he wrote a short story, "The Right Sort", strictly in compliance with Twitter conventions that restrict each tweet to 140 characters (approximately 20 words per tweet).
The restraints are so commonplace in a non-literary context that it's easy to overlook just how much this exercise constituted a work within the post-modern tradition.
Superficially, it seems that the story grew, tweet by tweet, without any overarching design. Thus, apparently, David Mitchell entrusted himself to his sentences and tweets and wherever his story took him.
Whatever the constraints, story (and therefore story-telling) prevailed and supplied the skeletal strength of the short story.
Fresh from writing "The Bone Clocks" and still committed to the concept of an über-novel, it was perhaps inevitable that the story would intersect with the subject matter of the über-novel. As a result, when Mitchell decided to turn the Twitter project into a fully-fledged novel, he remained in the realm of "The Bone Clocks".
Is This the Right Start? Is This Just Fantasy?
For readers who are new to David Mitchell or who have read him only selectively, you could ask whether this short work is an appropriate place to start.
It's certainly capable of being read as a stand-alone novel. However, I wouldn't recommend this, unless you don't really intend to read any earlier books, particularly "The Bone Clocks".
If you're curious about the fantasy world that Mitchell is constructing, then this is a way to dip your toes into it, without making the investment of time that the longer "The Bone Clocks" would require (even though both books are very easy to read).
If you've already read "The Bone Clocks" and didn't like the fantasy elements, then I'm tempted to recommend that you avoid "Slade House".
David Mitchell in David Bowie make-up at the Brisbane Writers' Festival, May 20, 2015
Wholly Unapologetic Submersion
Mitchell is aware that many readers don't relate to the genre aspects of his über-verse.
This novel, as the next in the sequence, might have been an opportunity to attract or placate such readers. However, instead, Mitchell wholly and unapologetically submerges himself and his readers in the same environment that worried some readers of "The Bone Clocks".
If "The Bone Clocks" disappointed your expectations, then this novel confronts readers with the choice of changing their expectations, suspending disbelief, or jumping off the Mitchell train at this station.
This is Mitchell's statement to us that he knows what he is doing and that he intends to do it that way. So what is it exactly that he is doing?
Five Times Nine
Once again, we get the juxtaposition of diverse chapters or stories. This time, there are five first person narratives, each separated from the next by nine years.
Whereas sometimes it's been difficult to work out what links the stories, this time they're linked by Slade House itself. The five stories give us five perspectives on the significance of Slade House in the über-verse over a period of time.
Atypically, one perspective belongs to an Atemporal - someone who has a limited capacity to free themselves from the dictates of time and achieve immortality by periodically killing engifted humans for spiritual sustenance (as opposed to Horologists, who are naturally immortal - get it?).
Return to Psychosoterica
Needless to say, we have to get our heads around Mitchell's psychosoteric framework.
It includes Lacunas (small spaces that are immune from time), Transversion (a form of astral projection that allows Atemporals to get a long way away from their body for a long time), Suasioning (which allows their soul to occupy another person's body for an extended period of time), and Orisons (reality bubbles in which the souls and psychovoltage of engifted humans can be removed immediately before their death, so that the modus operandi of Atemporals can be recharged).
So, you can see we're squarely in the time and space of "The Bone Clocks"!
I don't want to give anything away, except to say that we encounter one favoured Horologist, no Anchorites and two or three presumably evil Atemporals (who have eschewed the Shaded Way). By the end of the novel, the numbers have reduced a little (if not the diversity), but in a way that is clearly designed to permit a sequel, if not a prequel!
A Portrait by the Artist of an Adventure
From a literary point of view, this is not one of Mitchell's overtly lyrical novels. The language is economical, functional (including mandatory info-dumps - chill, sceptic!) and fun, apart from the last page, which sets the scene for the future in an evilly, eerily-romanticised style.
Like "The Bone Clocks", the novel is an out and out adventure.
The pace is rapid. You don't have to stop to think. All dialogue is plot-driven. It's in the tradition of boy's and girl's own adventures. In parts, it reminded me of a mash-up of Harry Potter and Enid Blyton. It comes complete with an "X-Files Six" composed of student science society nerds, one of whom is truly engifted.
As with "The Bone Clocks", it's not intended to be taken too seriously. It's meant to be enjoyed with childish or teenaged enthusiasm. No sooner are you finished than you're ready for the next episode or instalment.
We have the opportunity to read the über-novel chronologically according to the date of composition, not knowing where it's going. One day, when it's all finished and some of us have shuffled off this mortal coil, readers will be able to jump into the completed work, not caring about the order in which they read it. To them, it won't matter where the artist started their painting. Their eyes will be able to roam the completed canvas with delight. If you're open-minded enough, you can read like this now! Enjoy!
SOUNDTRACK:
Netgalley Disclosure
This is a review of an eBook that I accessed through Netgalley before publication.
"Slade House" grew out of David Mitchell's Oulipean project in which he wrote a short story, "The Right Sort", strictly in compliance with Twitter conventions that restrict each tweet to 140 characters (approximately 20 words per tweet).
The restraints are so commonplace in a non-literary context that it's easy to overlook just how much this exercise constituted a work within the post-modern tradition.
Superficially, it seems that the story grew, tweet by tweet, without any overarching design. Thus, apparently, David Mitchell entrusted himself to his sentences and tweets and wherever his story took him.
Whatever the constraints, story (and therefore story-telling) prevailed and supplied the skeletal strength of the short story.
Fresh from writing "The Bone Clocks" and still committed to the concept of an über-novel, it was perhaps inevitable that the story would intersect with the subject matter of the über-novel. As a result, when Mitchell decided to turn the Twitter project into a fully-fledged novel, he remained in the realm of "The Bone Clocks".
Is This the Right Start? Is This Just Fantasy?
For readers who are new to David Mitchell or who have read him only selectively, you could ask whether this short work is an appropriate place to start.
It's certainly capable of being read as a stand-alone novel. However, I wouldn't recommend this, unless you don't really intend to read any earlier books, particularly "The Bone Clocks".
If you're curious about the fantasy world that Mitchell is constructing, then this is a way to dip your toes into it, without making the investment of time that the longer "The Bone Clocks" would require (even though both books are very easy to read).
If you've already read "The Bone Clocks" and didn't like the fantasy elements, then I'm tempted to recommend that you avoid "Slade House".
David Mitchell in David Bowie make-up at the Brisbane Writers' Festival, May 20, 2015
Wholly Unapologetic Submersion
Mitchell is aware that many readers don't relate to the genre aspects of his über-verse.
This novel, as the next in the sequence, might have been an opportunity to attract or placate such readers. However, instead, Mitchell wholly and unapologetically submerges himself and his readers in the same environment that worried some readers of "The Bone Clocks".
If "The Bone Clocks" disappointed your expectations, then this novel confronts readers with the choice of changing their expectations, suspending disbelief, or jumping off the Mitchell train at this station.
This is Mitchell's statement to us that he knows what he is doing and that he intends to do it that way. So what is it exactly that he is doing?
Five Times Nine
Once again, we get the juxtaposition of diverse chapters or stories. This time, there are five first person narratives, each separated from the next by nine years.
Whereas sometimes it's been difficult to work out what links the stories, this time they're linked by Slade House itself. The five stories give us five perspectives on the significance of Slade House in the über-verse over a period of time.
Atypically, one perspective belongs to an Atemporal - someone who has a limited capacity to free themselves from the dictates of time and achieve immortality by periodically killing engifted humans for spiritual sustenance (as opposed to Horologists, who are naturally immortal - get it?).
Return to Psychosoterica
Needless to say, we have to get our heads around Mitchell's psychosoteric framework.
It includes Lacunas (small spaces that are immune from time), Transversion (a form of astral projection that allows Atemporals to get a long way away from their body for a long time), Suasioning (which allows their soul to occupy another person's body for an extended period of time), and Orisons (reality bubbles in which the souls and psychovoltage of engifted humans can be removed immediately before their death, so that the modus operandi of Atemporals can be recharged).
So, you can see we're squarely in the time and space of "The Bone Clocks"!
I don't want to give anything away, except to say that we encounter one favoured Horologist, no Anchorites and two or three presumably evil Atemporals (who have eschewed the Shaded Way). By the end of the novel, the numbers have reduced a little (if not the diversity), but in a way that is clearly designed to permit a sequel, if not a prequel!
A Portrait by the Artist of an Adventure
From a literary point of view, this is not one of Mitchell's overtly lyrical novels. The language is economical, functional (including mandatory info-dumps - chill, sceptic!) and fun, apart from the last page, which sets the scene for the future in an evilly, eerily-romanticised style.
Like "The Bone Clocks", the novel is an out and out adventure.
The pace is rapid. You don't have to stop to think. All dialogue is plot-driven. It's in the tradition of boy's and girl's own adventures. In parts, it reminded me of a mash-up of Harry Potter and Enid Blyton. It comes complete with an "X-Files Six" composed of student science society nerds, one of whom is truly engifted.
As with "The Bone Clocks", it's not intended to be taken too seriously. It's meant to be enjoyed with childish or teenaged enthusiasm. No sooner are you finished than you're ready for the next episode or instalment.
We have the opportunity to read the über-novel chronologically according to the date of composition, not knowing where it's going. One day, when it's all finished and some of us have shuffled off this mortal coil, readers will be able to jump into the completed work, not caring about the order in which they read it. To them, it won't matter where the artist started their painting. Their eyes will be able to roam the completed canvas with delight. If you're open-minded enough, you can read like this now! Enjoy!
SOUNDTRACK:
Netgalley Disclosure
This is a review of an eBook that I accessed through Netgalley before publication.
May 22, 2022
* Reread May 2022…..just as entertaining!
I received an Advance Reader copy of this book from NetGalley and Random House Publishing. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House. This review, however, is based on the hardcover version.
What a fun, creepy, clever book! A great follow-up to "The Bone Clocks" and much easier to follow.
"Slade House" consists of 5 intertwined stories, starting in 1979. Each subsequent story occurs 9 years from the previous story, ending in 2015. The mysterious Slade House is a mansion hidden behind a small iron door in Slade Alley and it only appears to one chosen "guest" on one particular night every 9 years. It's great fun watching this story unfold. If you've never read Mitchell, you will still be able to follow it, but it will probably be much more accessible to those familiar with Mitchell's world. For Mitchell devotees, one character in the last story will be very familiar to you. The appearance made me smile and sit up in interest because I knew some serious comeuppance was about to be dealt. And I loved the ending, which promises more fun to come.
This would be a great choice for a Halloween read. Loved it!
I received an Advance Reader copy of this book from NetGalley and Random House Publishing. Thanks to NetGalley and Random House. This review, however, is based on the hardcover version.
What a fun, creepy, clever book! A great follow-up to "The Bone Clocks" and much easier to follow.
"Slade House" consists of 5 intertwined stories, starting in 1979. Each subsequent story occurs 9 years from the previous story, ending in 2015. The mysterious Slade House is a mansion hidden behind a small iron door in Slade Alley and it only appears to one chosen "guest" on one particular night every 9 years. It's great fun watching this story unfold. If you've never read Mitchell, you will still be able to follow it, but it will probably be much more accessible to those familiar with Mitchell's world. For Mitchell devotees, one character in the last story will be very familiar to you. The appearance made me smile and sit up in interest because I knew some serious comeuppance was about to be dealt. And I loved the ending, which promises more fun to come.
This would be a great choice for a Halloween read. Loved it!
December 6, 2015
It's so fun to see what people think is traditional fiction these days. Even Goodreads categorizing this one as Horror is funny as hell. This was SF. I mean, how else can anyone classify closed time-like loops, telepathy? Oh, all right, eating a soul is primarily an occupational hazard of the horror genre, so I'll give *that* a pass. The narrative structure of sending his darlings into the roach motel, over and over and over is kind of a dead giveaway, too. Get it? Dead? Oh, nevermind...
And yet, I'm still stunned that the world at large prefers to keep Mr. David Mitchell as a mainstream author while looking down their noses at all the other greats. This was actually a pretty standard fare among good SF, using heavy reliance on Clarke's Law to pull some rather cool tricks with the timestream while passing the rest of the novel off as a bogeyman story. I really enjoyed it. The characters were all stunningly well crafted and I loved seeing them all die. The end *was* a rather dues ex-machina, but the hint of the Bone Clocks tells me that this is part of much larger narrative structure and I'm definitely going to have to read his other books to understand exactly why this happened the way it happened.
That's called baiting. Drug pushers do it all the time, Mr. Mitchell. You dangled your drug under the nose of some of the most addictive personalities in the universe, the so-called "readership", and now we're hooked.
He's an evil man.
Other than my entirely justified grievance, I was rather thrilled while reading to see so many wonderful similarities in the narrative to a certain Tim Powers. It was like dipping my toes in the cold cold waters of The Anubis Gates. I'm only talking about the feel, mind you. Lots of interesting ideas and odd directions eventually focusing in upon its eventual prey in a methodically imaginative pace. I loved it. Of course, now I have to read a lot more of BOTH of these authors, but that's okay because I'm not dead yet. I can't regret not picking up these other titles because I still have the chance.
Am I excited? Yeah, I think I am. I might just be becoming a fanboy of Mr. Mitchell, despite my miasma of gripes. They're not directed at the man, himself, except inso that I want to hate him a little for not embracing his ACTUAL HERITAGE. *sigh*
This was one hell of a good horror/SF, people. Enjoy it!
And yet, I'm still stunned that the world at large prefers to keep Mr. David Mitchell as a mainstream author while looking down their noses at all the other greats. This was actually a pretty standard fare among good SF, using heavy reliance on Clarke's Law to pull some rather cool tricks with the timestream while passing the rest of the novel off as a bogeyman story. I really enjoyed it. The characters were all stunningly well crafted and I loved seeing them all die. The end *was* a rather dues ex-machina, but the hint of the Bone Clocks tells me that this is part of much larger narrative structure and I'm definitely going to have to read his other books to understand exactly why this happened the way it happened.
That's called baiting. Drug pushers do it all the time, Mr. Mitchell. You dangled your drug under the nose of some of the most addictive personalities in the universe, the so-called "readership", and now we're hooked.
He's an evil man.
Other than my entirely justified grievance, I was rather thrilled while reading to see so many wonderful similarities in the narrative to a certain Tim Powers. It was like dipping my toes in the cold cold waters of The Anubis Gates. I'm only talking about the feel, mind you. Lots of interesting ideas and odd directions eventually focusing in upon its eventual prey in a methodically imaginative pace. I loved it. Of course, now I have to read a lot more of BOTH of these authors, but that's okay because I'm not dead yet. I can't regret not picking up these other titles because I still have the chance.
Am I excited? Yeah, I think I am. I might just be becoming a fanboy of Mr. Mitchell, despite my miasma of gripes. They're not directed at the man, himself, except inso that I want to hate him a little for not embracing his ACTUAL HERITAGE. *sigh*
This was one hell of a good horror/SF, people. Enjoy it!
May 5, 2023
Haunting, but Exhilarating, Jaunt into Darkness
If you, dear contemplating reader, haven't read a David Mitchell novel, you are in for a spectacular, albeit short, treat, so go ahead, DO IT....
Step into the appealing aperture that's Slade House, only open a day or two every 9 years. Rest assured: what happens in Slade House, stays in Slade House.
I enjoyed reading David Mitchell's short novel, that is as witty as it is chilling, about a house of horrors, the cerebral and vampiric twins in residence, and the never-ending nature of the battle between the forces of evil and good.
Highly Recommended for an entertaining expedition into the depths of evil.
If you, dear contemplating reader, haven't read a David Mitchell novel, you are in for a spectacular, albeit short, treat, so go ahead, DO IT....
Step into the appealing aperture that's Slade House, only open a day or two every 9 years. Rest assured: what happens in Slade House, stays in Slade House.
I enjoyed reading David Mitchell's short novel, that is as witty as it is chilling, about a house of horrors, the cerebral and vampiric twins in residence, and the never-ending nature of the battle between the forces of evil and good.
Highly Recommended for an entertaining expedition into the depths of evil.
May 6, 2019
Was this a weird book? Yes
Did it scare me? No
Did I enjoy the complex plot? Heck yes.
I almost gave up on Slade House in the beginning because the plot was so confusing. Stick with it!
Was I confused with some of the mystical shit? Uh, yes
Will I read more books by David Mitchell? YES!
I enjoyed this short, suspenseful book by David Mitchell. I wouldn't necessarily classify this as horror since it didn't scare me but it had great horror elements in it.
Slade House is a strange and unique plot with interesting themes of ghosts, souls and mystic ideas! It's a trippy roller-coaster of a ride. I really enjoyed the book more after getting the back story of Slade House and it's inhabitants. From that point on, I was in the story and hooked.
I’m glad I finally got around to this one. Recommended if you like trippy, paranormal plots!
Did it scare me? No
Did I enjoy the complex plot? Heck yes.
I almost gave up on Slade House in the beginning because the plot was so confusing. Stick with it!
Was I confused with some of the mystical shit? Uh, yes
Will I read more books by David Mitchell? YES!
I enjoyed this short, suspenseful book by David Mitchell. I wouldn't necessarily classify this as horror since it didn't scare me but it had great horror elements in it.
Slade House is a strange and unique plot with interesting themes of ghosts, souls and mystic ideas! It's a trippy roller-coaster of a ride. I really enjoyed the book more after getting the back story of Slade House and it's inhabitants. From that point on, I was in the story and hooked.
I’m glad I finally got around to this one. Recommended if you like trippy, paranormal plots!
November 1, 2016
I dragged this one out so I could finish it on Halloween. This was creepy but not too much. I liked it. Every nine years on the last Saturday of October, that black door to the gardens of Slade House opens to another victim.....perfect for Halloween :)
August 31, 2016
What an absolute little treasure of a book! I could not put it down and read it in one totally enjoyable afternoon. I have already read a couple of this author's better known works and enjoyed them but this one was so short yet so packed full of mystery, fantasy and a touch of horror.
Imagine a fabulous mansion which appears only once every nine years and two horrific vampire like residents who live forever by consuming human souls. Then follow the stories of each of those souls as they are tempted in and reach their really nasty ends.
A clever, almost perfect little piece of entertainment. Loved it:)
Imagine a fabulous mansion which appears only once every nine years and two horrific vampire like residents who live forever by consuming human souls. Then follow the stories of each of those souls as they are tempted in and reach their really nasty ends.
A clever, almost perfect little piece of entertainment. Loved it:)
October 27, 2024
A ghost story that in 5 episodes develops to a tie-in for The Bone Clocks. Nice for Halloween, but the structure makes the book feel longer than 200 pages
People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.
One needs to have some acceptance of the occult, but the characterisation David Mitchell manages to pull off in this slim volume is impressive enough. Starting in 1979 and concluding on Halloween 2015, Slade House tells a supernatural story, unfolding every last Saturday in October. A door to Slade House can be found in an alley. It has no handle, keyhole, or gaps around the edges. It’s black, nothing-black, like the gaps between stars.
The atmosphere is delightfully conjured, and at times quite scary. I feel the author had a lot of fun in writing this novel, but the story requires a lot of exposition and is probably my least favourite of his works. Still that means a solid 4 star read overall!
Thoughts per section of the book below.
The Right Sort - 1979 kicks off the story. In the first paragraph our narrator passes the Fox and Hounds, a pub with a sign that already promises violence: “The sign shows three beagles cornering a fox. They’re about to pounce and rip it apart”.
This section, developed from an initial twitter story by Mitchell, is probably my favourite in the novel.
Nathan Bishop, thirteen and on valium, is dragged by his mom to a soiree. He has trouble interpreting the facial expressions of others, but it isn’t too long till he finds out Slade House is more than it seems and far from normal. We have a dead, moon grey cat, is also a troubling sign.
We then meet Jonah and his mother (“Lets say she is”) Lady Norah Grayer.
Soon talk moves to topics that that have disturbing implications: Food that makes you hungrier, the more of it you eat.
Is it drugs or the supernatural seems to be the key theme in this section, exemplified by for instance:
What do you do when you’re visiting someone’s house and their garden starts vanishing?
In Shining Armour - 1988 we meet divorced racist policeman Gordon Edmonds. He finds more trouble than he bargained for when trying to stay in the good book of his boss, with a mysterious widow thrown into the mix.
Vyvyan Ayrs from Cloud Atlas is mentioned as is a fortune teller booth in Brighton, which I recall from The Bone Clocks. Also the term sub-orison makes an appearance, reminding me of Somni-451 in Cloud Atlas
“Are you real?” A brittle voice. Not the sanest opening question. spells trouble, as does a certain brother showing up again:...this blond guy, dressed in a robe thing like Chloe’s, handsome in a sort of gay model Hitler Youth way.
Oink Oink - 1997 focuses on a paranormal club of students who are onto Slade House. We have a Fern Penhaligon, that seems a link to the captain The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and I am sure there was a character in Utopia Avenue with that surname as well. Plus her brother is in the Bone Clocks apparently. Crispin Hershey’s novel from Bone Clocks comes back as well.
Besides linkages between the books of Mitchell we also have a jogger who reappears for the third time. Meanwhile Sally Timms, the main character, fancies Todd and is having early adulthood uncertainties about her weight and comparing to other girls, including her in New York living sister Freya. One sentence here didn't age that well with people lining out of the doors of bookstores for Sally Rooney her latest novel: Name me one famous Sally. Go on. You can’t, can you?
There are quite touching conversations as well, reflecting on mortality and the reason why some of the students joined the paranormal club in the first place: Just one ghost, so I know that death’s not game over, but a door.
You Dark Horse You - 2006
Arguably the weakest part of the novel, quite an info-dump, and less elegantly done than a similar section in The Bone Clocks. Freya, the sister of sally is searching of answers: Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.
She is a journalist working for the same magazine as Luisa Rey of Cloud Atlas and Ed Brubeck from The Bone Clocks worked for.
There is a meeting in a pub: I’ve known livelier morgues than The Fox and Hounds..
And things turn uncanny: The wackometer needle is stuck on 11.
Beliefs play a major role in this chapter, but in the end even the more explained supernatural events can go differently than expected: What proof’d convince you?
Proof that is proof, not faith masquerading as proof.
Astronauts - 2015 starts of from the perspective of Norah, one of the two drivers of the procedure that we have been following throughout the book.
They seem to have an easy time, and things in general seem hopeful with a moon grey cat reappearing, yet this time alive.
Iris Marinus-Fenby - a black professional in her late thirties, who makes various appearances in other works of David Mitchell appears an easy victim. She is managed by Bombadil, an interesting The Lord of the Rings reference this character’s name.
A retreat in Kirishima, where Count Enomoto of the Thousand Autumns held power is mentioned.
I am curious if Norah will reappear in a later David Mitchell novel.
Quotes:
Truth has this habit of changing after the fact, don’t you find?
This is war. In war, ends justify means. War is ends justifying means.
A preening fool composed of a pig’s afterbirth.
A murderous demon of a man. You would have liked him.
People are masks, with masks under those masks, and masks under those, and down you go.
One needs to have some acceptance of the occult, but the characterisation David Mitchell manages to pull off in this slim volume is impressive enough. Starting in 1979 and concluding on Halloween 2015, Slade House tells a supernatural story, unfolding every last Saturday in October. A door to Slade House can be found in an alley. It has no handle, keyhole, or gaps around the edges. It’s black, nothing-black, like the gaps between stars.
The atmosphere is delightfully conjured, and at times quite scary. I feel the author had a lot of fun in writing this novel, but the story requires a lot of exposition and is probably my least favourite of his works. Still that means a solid 4 star read overall!
Thoughts per section of the book below.
The Right Sort - 1979 kicks off the story. In the first paragraph our narrator passes the Fox and Hounds, a pub with a sign that already promises violence: “The sign shows three beagles cornering a fox. They’re about to pounce and rip it apart”.
This section, developed from an initial twitter story by Mitchell, is probably my favourite in the novel.
Nathan Bishop, thirteen and on valium, is dragged by his mom to a soiree. He has trouble interpreting the facial expressions of others, but it isn’t too long till he finds out Slade House is more than it seems and far from normal. We have a dead, moon grey cat, is also a troubling sign.
We then meet Jonah and his mother (“Lets say she is”) Lady Norah Grayer.
Soon talk moves to topics that that have disturbing implications: Food that makes you hungrier, the more of it you eat.
Is it drugs or the supernatural seems to be the key theme in this section, exemplified by for instance:
What do you do when you’re visiting someone’s house and their garden starts vanishing?
In Shining Armour - 1988 we meet divorced racist policeman Gordon Edmonds. He finds more trouble than he bargained for when trying to stay in the good book of his boss, with a mysterious widow thrown into the mix.
Vyvyan Ayrs from Cloud Atlas is mentioned as is a fortune teller booth in Brighton, which I recall from The Bone Clocks. Also the term sub-orison makes an appearance, reminding me of Somni-451 in Cloud Atlas
“Are you real?” A brittle voice. Not the sanest opening question. spells trouble, as does a certain brother showing up again:...this blond guy, dressed in a robe thing like Chloe’s, handsome in a sort of gay model Hitler Youth way.
Oink Oink - 1997 focuses on a paranormal club of students who are onto Slade House. We have a Fern Penhaligon, that seems a link to the captain The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and I am sure there was a character in Utopia Avenue with that surname as well. Plus her brother is in the Bone Clocks apparently. Crispin Hershey’s novel from Bone Clocks comes back as well.
Besides linkages between the books of Mitchell we also have a jogger who reappears for the third time. Meanwhile Sally Timms, the main character, fancies Todd and is having early adulthood uncertainties about her weight and comparing to other girls, including her in New York living sister Freya. One sentence here didn't age that well with people lining out of the doors of bookstores for Sally Rooney her latest novel: Name me one famous Sally. Go on. You can’t, can you?
There are quite touching conversations as well, reflecting on mortality and the reason why some of the students joined the paranormal club in the first place: Just one ghost, so I know that death’s not game over, but a door.
You Dark Horse You - 2006
Arguably the weakest part of the novel, quite an info-dump, and less elegantly done than a similar section in The Bone Clocks. Freya, the sister of sally is searching of answers: Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.
She is a journalist working for the same magazine as Luisa Rey of Cloud Atlas and Ed Brubeck from The Bone Clocks worked for.
There is a meeting in a pub: I’ve known livelier morgues than The Fox and Hounds..
And things turn uncanny: The wackometer needle is stuck on 11.
Beliefs play a major role in this chapter, but in the end even the more explained supernatural events can go differently than expected: What proof’d convince you?
Proof that is proof, not faith masquerading as proof.
Astronauts - 2015 starts of from the perspective of Norah, one of the two drivers of the procedure that we have been following throughout the book.
They seem to have an easy time, and things in general seem hopeful with a moon grey cat reappearing, yet this time alive.
Iris Marinus-Fenby - a black professional in her late thirties, who makes various appearances in other works of David Mitchell appears an easy victim. She is managed by Bombadil, an interesting The Lord of the Rings reference this character’s name.
A retreat in Kirishima, where Count Enomoto of the Thousand Autumns held power is mentioned.
I am curious if Norah will reappear in a later David Mitchell novel.
Quotes:
Truth has this habit of changing after the fact, don’t you find?
This is war. In war, ends justify means. War is ends justifying means.
A preening fool composed of a pig’s afterbirth.
A murderous demon of a man. You would have liked him.
October 29, 2015
Trust no one........DO NOT go down the alley........DO NOT pass though the gate, and NEVER enter SLADE HOUSE for you may NEVER leave.............
SUPER WEIRD and filled with the mysterious, this twisty haunted house tale makes for a great Halloween read! The unique format of the individual, but related stories combined with the various "tricks" and "treats" of the evil presence kept me guessing between what was real and what was imaginary.
This is my first David Mitchell novel, but NOT my last.
July 31, 2023
Îmi amintesc o replică din Darul lui Humbold de Saul Bellow: „Privea inteligent în direcția greșită”. David Mitchel scrie cu istețime și ingeniozitate un roman greu de încadrat într-o specie literară. Fantezie narativă? Twitter story? Uber-novel? Greu de spus. Bate în toate direcțiile. Dar să-l compari cu Prăbușirea casei Usher, cu The Turn of the Screw mi se pare cam mult.
Oricum, este o poveste despre două entități reîncărcabile, Norah și Jonah, vampiri pneumatici de felul lor. Poftim:
„Gemenii Grayer sînt ca o pereche de jidovi rătăcitori, care sălășluiesc în trupurile altora, ocupîndu-le și deplasîndu-se cu ele, în timp ce trupurile lor stau, bine-mersi, înlemnite într-o bulă temporală din Conacul Slade, unde-i veșnic 1934... Le-au trebuit cîțiva ani - și cîțiva șoareci de laborator-, ca să-și perfecționeze modul de-operare, dacă se poate spune-așa. Dar aici e-un clenci. Sistemul nu funcționează la curent electric. Funcționează la psihovoltaj... La fiecare nouă ani, gemenii Grayer trebuie să și-l alimenteze” (p.197).
P. S. N-am înțeles de ce a pus traducătorul atîtea cratime, vrea să ne mușcăm limba? Iată: e-un, de-operare, „n-are clanță, n-are vreo gaur-a cheii” (p.14).
P. P. S. Știu deja cui îi voi dărui cartea lui Mitchell. Știu că darul meu îl va face fericit, mai mult nu spun că mă sfiesc...
Oricum, este o poveste despre două entități reîncărcabile, Norah și Jonah, vampiri pneumatici de felul lor. Poftim:
„Gemenii Grayer sînt ca o pereche de jidovi rătăcitori, care sălășluiesc în trupurile altora, ocupîndu-le și deplasîndu-se cu ele, în timp ce trupurile lor stau, bine-mersi, înlemnite într-o bulă temporală din Conacul Slade, unde-i veșnic 1934... Le-au trebuit cîțiva ani - și cîțiva șoareci de laborator-, ca să-și perfecționeze modul de-operare, dacă se poate spune-așa. Dar aici e-un clenci. Sistemul nu funcționează la curent electric. Funcționează la psihovoltaj... La fiecare nouă ani, gemenii Grayer trebuie să și-l alimenteze” (p.197).
P. S. N-am înțeles de ce a pus traducătorul atîtea cratime, vrea să ne mușcăm limba? Iată: e-un, de-operare, „n-are clanță, n-are vreo gaur-a cheii” (p.14).
P. P. S. Știu deja cui îi voi dărui cartea lui Mitchell. Știu că darul meu îl va face fericit, mai mult nu spun că mă sfiesc...
September 12, 2015
Ok, this book was freakin' awesome! If you liked The Bone Clocks you have to read this one. It's a companion novel that gives you another look at the paranormal/atemporal aspects of TBC in a more microcosmic way. It's a brief novel, only five chapters each told from a different perspective across 36 years. But Mitchell is a master at pacing, and, like TBC, it builds up to a wonderful and metaphysical conclusion that is so bizarre it just works. It is a solid 4 star read for me, but by the last 50 pages or so I was so engrossed and impressed with the world Mitchell creates and expands on that I can't help giving it 5 stars. I think I'll stick with 4.5 stars though because I didn't love it quite as much as TBC. But it's still a fun, spooky, read, perfect for Halloween (and it comes out October 27). So I highly recommend this one, but read The Bone Clocks first!
October 23, 2015
Enter if you dare!
That’s more warning than victims get in David Mitchell’s devilishly fun new novel, which clawed its way to life from the ectoplasm of Twitter. Now, just in time for Halloween, “Slade House” opens its rusty door on a ghost story that dresses up all the dusty old tropes with Mitchell’s spirit and wit. His fans will need no enticement, but for the curious, too intimidated by “Cloud Atlas” or even last year’s “The Bone Clocks,” this little book will go down like fresh gummy worms.
If you’ve found Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station, you’ll have no problem locating Slade House. It’s just a step to the left. Go down the narrowest, darkest alley you’ve ever seen. The owners of Slade House are. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
That’s more warning than victims get in David Mitchell’s devilishly fun new novel, which clawed its way to life from the ectoplasm of Twitter. Now, just in time for Halloween, “Slade House” opens its rusty door on a ghost story that dresses up all the dusty old tropes with Mitchell’s spirit and wit. His fans will need no enticement, but for the curious, too intimidated by “Cloud Atlas” or even last year’s “The Bone Clocks,” this little book will go down like fresh gummy worms.
If you’ve found Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross Station, you’ll have no problem locating Slade House. It’s just a step to the left. Go down the narrowest, darkest alley you’ve ever seen. The owners of Slade House are. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
May 25, 2017
Geez, I guess it’s been awhile—nine months since my last review, in fact. I think the problem is this: the world has turned to shit. How can one allow himself the luxury of distraction when all the things that used to matter (e.g. facts, words, truth) no longer do? I feel as though...as though disconnecting from reality, even temporarily, is akin to complicity. Remember when you were taught that witnessing an evil act but doing nothing to stop it made you just as guilty as the one committing the wrongdoing? Well, broaden that concept and that pretty much sums up my life. I can’t do anything without worrying what horrible things are happening that I don’t know about, and which of course I need to know about, and ultimately do something about or else I’m a failure, which is clearly a vicious cycle because it is something over which I have no actual control—this shit is way too big for me to do anything about on my own, except to stew and seethe and writhe and tweet. So a few pages of a book, or a few minutes of a sitcom, is about all I afford myself. And not becauses I don’t want more! It’s just that...the world might be falling apart (and likely IS FALLING APART!!!1) and here I am reading about a couple of soul-suckers luring prey into their orisons and lacunas, whatever those are? What kind of person willingly gives up everything that has ever mattered to him just to lose himself in a fucking daydream?
Except that’s just it. I’m stuck in this hyper-vigilant, wide-awake world where it’s high-octane coffee allthefuckingtime or else Earth implodes on my watch, so I’d super better be watching.
About a month ago I got into a fight with this asshole who tried to tell me that I was making too much of things, that “none of this really affects me.” Jesus. AYFKM? I didn’t even know how to respond, partly because I wondered if he were right. What if all this stress, this fear, this expectation of impending doom, is nothing more than a manifestation of my own self-righteousness?
Well, you know what? It isn’t. This is my world and my country and my goddam life, and it matters to me so therefore it affects me. And somehow I found the opportunity to distract myself just enough to read this tiny book and you know what? I liked it. Maybe this reading thing could actually go somewhere.
(Little victories.)
Except that’s just it. I’m stuck in this hyper-vigilant, wide-awake world where it’s high-octane coffee allthefuckingtime or else Earth implodes on my watch, so I’d super better be watching.
About a month ago I got into a fight with this asshole who tried to tell me that I was making too much of things, that “none of this really affects me.” Jesus. AYFKM? I didn’t even know how to respond, partly because I wondered if he were right. What if all this stress, this fear, this expectation of impending doom, is nothing more than a manifestation of my own self-righteousness?
Well, you know what? It isn’t. This is my world and my country and my goddam life, and it matters to me so therefore it affects me. And somehow I found the opportunity to distract myself just enough to read this tiny book and you know what? I liked it. Maybe this reading thing could actually go somewhere.
(Little victories.)
December 21, 2017
4.5 stars!
When I saw this was available on audio from the library I jumped right on it, and I'm glad I did!
This was an entertaining and imaginative story. It's not really horror, but it's not really fantasy or sci-fi either. I guess I'd call it an amalgamation of all of those genres.
Whatever you want to label it, go ahead! I'm just going to say it was a hell of a story and I enjoyed it a lot.
Highly recommended!
When I saw this was available on audio from the library I jumped right on it, and I'm glad I did!
This was an entertaining and imaginative story. It's not really horror, but it's not really fantasy or sci-fi either. I guess I'd call it an amalgamation of all of those genres.
Whatever you want to label it, go ahead! I'm just going to say it was a hell of a story and I enjoyed it a lot.
Highly recommended!
February 7, 2017
I had never heard of “soul vampires” until I read “Slade House.” The Grayer twins, Jonah and Norah who lure victims to Slade House, every nine (9) years, are two such creatures.
The Right Sort - 1979
Rita Bishop and her son Nathan are entertained by Lady Norah Grayer and a boy Jonah who is about the same age as Nathan. It was not easy finding Lady Grayer’s house, but she saw a “bald man carrying a bucket and a pair of stepladders” go down Slade Alley and she thought that might lead to Slade House.
Nathan is the intended victim.
Shining Armor - 1988
Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds, CID meets and is wooed by Mrs. Chloe Chetwynd (Norah). DI Edmonds is following up on a lead that Fred Pink had provided after coming out of a coma. Mr. Pink was supposedly hit by a taxi in October 1979 while carrying his ladder out of Slade Alley. He was in a comma for about nine (9) years. He claimed to have seen Rita and her son around Slade Alley.
DI enjoyed his short time with Chloe, but vampires need nourishment to survive.
Oink Oink - 1997
Paranormal Society makes a field trip to Slade Alley. Many members disappear, but Sally Timms was the real target.
You Dark Horse You - - 2006
Freya Timms, a journalist, for the magazine Spyglass, and sister of Sally follows a lead. Freya was a victim but she managed to strike a blow on Jonah.
Astronauts – 2015
Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby, a psychiatrist is lured to Slade House. Dr. Marinus-Fenby has wrote academic papers on Slade House and unexplained disappearances.
Is there a doctor in the house? Yes, and she turns out to be no ordinary doctor.
What I learned from the story:
Don’t go down Slade Alley
Don’t go through an “aperture”, in a wall in Slade Alley.
Don’t go into Slade House.
Don’t eat or drink anything at Slade House.
Don’t go upstairs, in Slade House.
The Right Sort - 1979
Rita Bishop and her son Nathan are entertained by Lady Norah Grayer and a boy Jonah who is about the same age as Nathan. It was not easy finding Lady Grayer’s house, but she saw a “bald man carrying a bucket and a pair of stepladders” go down Slade Alley and she thought that might lead to Slade House.
Nathan is the intended victim.
Shining Armor - 1988
Detective Inspector Gordon Edmonds, CID meets and is wooed by Mrs. Chloe Chetwynd (Norah). DI Edmonds is following up on a lead that Fred Pink had provided after coming out of a coma. Mr. Pink was supposedly hit by a taxi in October 1979 while carrying his ladder out of Slade Alley. He was in a comma for about nine (9) years. He claimed to have seen Rita and her son around Slade Alley.
DI enjoyed his short time with Chloe, but vampires need nourishment to survive.
Oink Oink - 1997
Paranormal Society makes a field trip to Slade Alley. Many members disappear, but Sally Timms was the real target.
You Dark Horse You - - 2006
Freya Timms, a journalist, for the magazine Spyglass, and sister of Sally follows a lead. Freya was a victim but she managed to strike a blow on Jonah.
Astronauts – 2015
Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby, a psychiatrist is lured to Slade House. Dr. Marinus-Fenby has wrote academic papers on Slade House and unexplained disappearances.
Is there a doctor in the house? Yes, and she turns out to be no ordinary doctor.
What I learned from the story:
Don’t go down Slade Alley
Don’t go through an “aperture”, in a wall in Slade Alley.
Don’t go into Slade House.
Don’t eat or drink anything at Slade House.
Don’t go upstairs, in Slade House.
December 14, 2016
I hate to be wholly negative but for me this book is further evidence that Mitchell has lost the plot. I was willing to give The Bone Clocks a curate's egg (good in parts) review because it did at least have quite lengthy sections which showed some insight into reality and had echoes of his best work, but this one (like the penultimate part of The Bone Clocks) is just too obsessed with the risible fantasy nonsense about immortal souls and psychic superpowers.
Perhaps Mitchell finds the real world too depressing to write about in straighter ways, but I just can't swallow this stuff. To be fair the human characters are quite sympathetic and there is plenty of humour here, and it may well have been fun to write - perhaps I am just not the right audience for this...
To put this rant into context - I have read all of Mitchell's novels, in the order they were written. Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green are still among my favourite books, though all of his linked story novels have some strong sections and some weaker ones, and there was always an element of fantasy there. As I have said several times on other threads, for me Mitchell's writing works best when it is most grounded in the real world.
Perhaps Mitchell finds the real world too depressing to write about in straighter ways, but I just can't swallow this stuff. To be fair the human characters are quite sympathetic and there is plenty of humour here, and it may well have been fun to write - perhaps I am just not the right audience for this...
To put this rant into context - I have read all of Mitchell's novels, in the order they were written. Ghostwritten, Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green are still among my favourite books, though all of his linked story novels have some strong sections and some weaker ones, and there was always an element of fantasy there. As I have said several times on other threads, for me Mitchell's writing works best when it is most grounded in the real world.
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