REVIEW: Slade House: A Novel

Fiction by David Mitchell

Slade House: A Novel is a follow-up to the 2014 novel, The Bone Clocks, and exists in the same magically realistic world. It is not necessary to have read the previous book because Slade House is neither a sequel nor prequel but simply tangential to the original story.

Both are tales of horror and suspense, but where The Bone Clocks is filled with images of a future global dystopia and epic struggle for good and evil, Slade House is more Gothic in nature — a ghost story centered on an eerie London mansion and its inhabitants.  This mysterious place can only be accessed through an odd doorway that briefly appears in an out-of-the-way alley at certain times to admit select guests.  The story follows a series of these hapless visitors as they encounter the horror lurking within the house’s labyrinthine heart.

An interesting side note:  Slade House is one of David Mitchell’s shorter works (238 pages), possibly because it was written in 140-character chunks (tweets) and initially published online via the social media site, Twitter.  Mitchell is the critically-acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas and is known his suspenseful, high action stories, use of creative literary structures, and recurring characters and themes.  I am looking forward to the next opportunity to enter the spooky, exciting world of Slade House, The Bone Clocks, and the other fictional realms of David Mitchell.

— Kathy Sanders, Cooper River Memorial Library, North Charleston, S.C.

Slade House and other great books are available in the Charleston County Public Library catalog in New Books and Large Print and electronically as an E-Books and MP3 Audio download.