Slade House: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, October 27, 2015

No spoilers ahead.In a working class English neighborhood between Cranbury Avenue & Westwood Road next door to the Fox & Hounds Pub there is a long, twisted brick alley known as Slade Alley. If you follow the maze-like alleyway...if you look real hard...you will find a small black iron door in the brick wall. If you enter that small metal door you will see an unaccountably vast terraced garden belonging to a mansion known as Slade House. If you find your way into Slade House you will meet the residents but by then it is already too late for you.There has been a rash of missing persons throughout the years last seen going into this alley.I paid more for this book than I am usually willing to fork over (11.99 at Amazon) but it was well worth it & a great Halloween read. It was a welcome, original change to the same old, same old vampires, werewolves & zombies. Several times I thought I had the plot figured out but was surprised to the very end. Try it, it is different.

What was cool:The two co-protagonists, and the linear storyline, were developed through the first person perspective of several narrators who come and go.What was also cool:Mitchell makes a contract with us, right from the beginning, that this will not be a "and then it was all a dream" ending, with ambiguous "was this real or not?" cop out endings.What was not so cool:Plot development seemed forced. Mitchell seemed to commit far too much to the "narrator as a witness" approach, to make protagonists mysterious. Still, in order to explain the "mystery" and show "conflict" between the co-protagonists, the narrator (and reader) had to witness "evil genius/mas scientist/james bond villain" conversations.To keep us "hooked" to the plot, we did not get a conflict resolution on each chapter, just foreshadowing that something worse was coming.So then we had to go through another round of another "first person narrator" development (boring stories) before we ended up in the same place to listen to another villainous conversation and get another clue and more foreshadowing.By the third round, you just want your soul to be eaten and ended once and for all.I guess Mitchell had a good idea with the co-protagonist linear storyline. He also was onto something when making us witnesses through the eyes of several narrators.The reading drags on due to:* a need to be mysterious and supernatural, but at the same time provide us with explanations;* too much commitment to the first person narrator point of view;* a feel that narrator development was manufactured and forced at the service of the writing strategy, not the writing strategy being used at the service of the storyline;* Chapters were templates. You could read the first chapter and last chapter, and the last 4 pages of each chapter in between. You would still know what happened.Good idea. Not too well executed.A short story was enough. There was no need to extend this into a short novel made of many short stories.

Anything David Mitchell is amazing, at least so far in my opinion. However, this is slightly different as it is his first foray into the "literary, scary fairytale" genre. Because this genre is prone to spoilers, I won't say much. I recommend it if you are into an interesting story, a little spooky, with a number of interesting characters. Mitchell is a master of the language, so it will be better written than most things like it. Also, this story ranges over several decades and about a dozen characters, but because Mitchell's work can span centuries and contain 100s of characters (seriously), everything is easy to understand, and comes together nicely at the end.If you are a Mitchell fan, this is an interesting, relatively easy entry into a new genre. If you like spooky tales, this is a good one, that unfolds slowly, so it'll keep you interested. If you just like good books, it's worth it. Highly recommended.

One need not read The Bone Clocks to understand, follow and enjoy Slade House, though the world in which it's set will be familiar to those who who have read the other novel.Through five chapters set in five decades starting in the 1970s, we are sucked into a house that seems haunted and pretty scary. At first I was sure only "bad people" were invited, but that doesn't seem so clear by the end. Each story follows a similar path, yet they all advance the novel further and the stories are not just linked but the final few are completely interdependent. The basic gist is that a pair of twins seem to live in a house that can only be accessed every nine years, when a door appears to those invited, and all those invited will become the twins' victims.Why? Well in the most obvious sense, the twins need to feed on these people's souls. And since David Mitchell is the author, it's every nine years. I can accept that. But there are bigger questions for me -- why these people? Luckily one of the characters asks, and the answer is less than satisfactory:"What does 'deserve' have to do with anything?" Norah Grayer lifts her sharp eyebrows. "Did the pig whose smoked flesh you ate at breakfast 'deserve' her fate? The question’s irrelevant. You desired bacon and she couldn’t escape the abattoir. We desire your soul to power our operandi, and you can’t escape our lacuna. That’s it."So I don't get any metaphysical, moral or theological answers from Slade House, but it is great fun.

Rating: 3.5 (4 for style, 3 for my enjoyment)I don't often read books like this, but it was The Chosen One for my office book club this month. It was incredibly weird and twisty. I was afraid it would be more horrific, leaving me wanting to sleep with the lights on, but it wasn't a ghost story in that sense. I hate scary movies and books because they do have a huge impact on me, but this one was more psychological mindmuckery more than anything.David Mitchell built up hope and then tore it away again and again, but I kept going because each "guest" became more connected to the last, and the "how" and "why" was explained a little more with each time jump. The final section was very unexpected given it was becoming a teensy bit formulaic. But no, David managed to switch things up. He even left the ending a little bit open.I would say that this book might have been better enjoyed if I'd read The Bone Clocks. There were references to that book (according to another reviewer) that would have helped this make a bit more sense. This is especially true of the end.Part of me feels like I should go and read The Bone Clocks now, but I don't think I will. While I can appreciate the genius behind this story, it's not something I'd necessarily say I enjoyed. If you're a fan of thrillers with a paranormal twist? Then you might enjoy it more.

This book lacks any characters of note, it has poor dialogue and an unoriginal plot (for example Serge Brussolo's La Fenetre Jaune).It is not advertised as a teen novel but I would say the level of writing is for 12-15 year old. At the beginning it tries to be clever but falls short and eventually the author just gives up and the story descends into drivel.I will certainly not be buying any more of Mr Mitchell's books

I got into Mitchell’s work around 10yrs ago, starting with Cloud Atlas and have been a big fan ever since. This short novel is said to be something of a companion piece to his epic The Bone Clocks and it does complement it well, with some of the characters from that book making an appearance and being set in the same “universe”. However, you don’t have to have read Bone Clocks first; this book is entirely standalone.As for Slade House itself, as with most of Mitchell’s works, each chapter is told from the perspective of a different narrator as they find themselves in the confounding world that is Slade House, and it makes for truly compelling reading. You’ll really want to know how it all ends, I promise you.If you’re new to David Mitchell and don’t want something that’s too long, this is a perfect starting point, and if you’re already familiar with him but haven’t read this, then what are you waiting for?

I am a David Mitchell fan. The last of his books I read was ‘Utopia Avenue’ and I loved it. I understand that ‘Slade House’ takes place in the same world as ‘The Bone Clocks’ but it has been 6 years since I read ‘The Bone Clocks’ so I don’t really remember it at all but I do remember that it wasn’t one of my favourites. I had reasonably high hopes for ‘Slade House’ but I didn’t expect to recall anything from ‘The Bone Clocks’.This book reads like a few short stories, although with a central theme. The first story is set in 1979 and subsequent chapters advance in nine-year intervals. All of the chapters are told in first-person narrative which follow the same essential pattern and involve the same creepy house in a run-down corner of London. The only consistent characters are Norah and Jonah Grayer, telepathic twins, and we meet them in each chapter in different guises.I was sucked into the first chapter straight away. Mitchell has a knack for making me enjoy his characters and I immediately became invested in the story. After the first chapter, we jumped to a different time, place and set of characters and this threw me off balance a bit but I persevered and got involved with the new story. Then we switched again and the process started again and I began to lose a little bit of interest.The story flows well and, unlike others, I didn’t find the language and writing disjointed. The stories themselves are a bit disjointed but I think that is by design. I struggled to care about the twins or the outcome towards the end as I felt that the characters got weaker as I read through the chapters. In the end, I wasn’t really sure what was happening or how it ended that way.Overall, not one of my favourite Mitchell books but I like the style (reminded me of Haruki Murakami, who I love). I will continue to check out David Mitchell's work for sure.

Slade House was the perfect read for the run up to Halloween. Creepy and suspenseful, it's set in the world of The Bone Clocks, where people and places are rarely what they seem. It definitely works best as a companion to the previous novel - I think if you haven't read that, some of the intricacies and the supernatural weirdness might seem overwhelming for a fairly short read. If you're a fan though, then you'll love it.Slade House is accessed through a small black iron door in Slade Alley that only appears once every few years. If the door lets you in, you'll enter the garden of a large house that shouldn't be able to fit in between Cranbury Avenue and Westwood Road. The story follows five different people as they discover Slade House. The first to arrive are Nathan and his mum in 1979, and they are all too willing to simply accept the oddness and unlikelihood of the place. In future years though, the occasional person becomes intrigued, and starts to investigate the strange and disturbing phenomenon. And we all know what curiosity did...