#amreading Slade House
Author: David Mitchell
Discovered: I've been looking forward to this since the story was teased as part of Mitchell's Twitter fiction experiment last year.
Where read: (in part) The Coffee Works Project, Blackfriars Road
What's the story?
Slade House is set in the same world as The Bone Clocks but stands apart as its own story, a companion book if you like. Like Mitchell's other works Slade House features diverse voices from teenager Nathan in 1979 to an investigative journalist in 2015. The novel is based around the classic literary device of the haunted house but when given the fantasy time-bending David Mitchell treatment the end result is something unique.
The Word's Shortlist view:
David Mitchell never disappoints. Slade House is a short but dense tale that includes Mitchell's trademark multiple voices, intertwining destinies and time travel in a really accessible way. I have friends who have been put off by the sheer scale of The Bone Clocks but this novella is a great introduction to the horological themes in the main text. Banjax, psychovoltage, Engifteds - you'll soon get in to it!
The novella's structure is really simple; on Halloween every 9 years a small portal appears in the wall around Slade House which inevitably leads to somebody new discovering the house. Once inside the abductees' discover a missing person hostel, of sorts, preserved in amber. Fantasy meets pure gothic horror. Slade House is part detective investigation and part Doctor Who, Phantom Manor for grown-ups.
What’s next on the bookshelf
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