Slade House

***NO SPOILERS***

The book summary undersells this one. David Mitchell dreamed up the ultimate haunted house—eerie, genuinely frightening, chilling to the bone. This is horror but not gore. The house’s ability to entrance, trap, and steal away—with the finality of a steel door slamming shut—is what’s scary here. There’s no escape, and the helplessness is horrifying. The especially brave or curious might explore Hill House, but no one in their right mind wants to step over the threshold of Slade House.

Each chapter focuses on a different visitor to the house. At first they seem to have nothing in common, but the reader later learns that these unlucky souls have an important similarity. Certain features recur in each chapter to show more provide a sense of chilling anticipation balanced by just the right dose of unpredictability: a grandfather clock on the landing, a pale door at the top of the stairs, the portraits on the wall. Chapters connect to each other while still being thrillingly unique; readers know what will happen by the end of each but don’t know what the journey will look like.

Most impressive has to be the vivid scene-setting. Slade House is very much felt. On the outside it’s majestic and solid, with a malevolence that can’t be masked no matter how cheerfully it’s dressed up. On the inside it’s labyrinthine. Too many staircases and doors fill the space. Up is down. Down is up. It’s no coincidence that the name M.C. Escher pops up at one point. What surrounds Slade House differs based on the visitor. Some see a wondrous garden to rival the Garden of Eden, with flowers of every type, fruit trees, strawberries, butterflies, a pond, and a ginkgo tree that sheds fan-like leaves. A small black-iron door off an ugly alleyway opens into this spellbinding place, and not just anyone can open, or even find, that door.

The story features two ice-cold villains that Mitchell crafted carefully so they’re sufficiently powerful and merciless. Particularly riveting is a section devoted to an elaborate history of how they became who they are, starting from their birth to the present day. It’s like eavesdropping on the juiciest gossip. The villains’ motivation is basic, but Mitchell’s Slade House and the fantastical world surrounding it is creatively complex. It’s so much fun that by the end the reader will long for more. The good news is that the story ends in such a way that it seems apparent this intriguing world will live on in a third book.

Slade House is a sequel or companion to [book:The Bone Clocks|20819685], but readers can read it as a stand-alone. It’s ideal, of course, to read The Bone Clocks first, as Mitchell references it a little, and the ending in particular will have greater meaning; however, all is clear and to-the-point, so Slade House is readily understandable.

Tip: Readers will find it enlightening to re-read the first chapter upon finishing the book. show less

Every nine years on the last Saturday in October, a mysterious iron door appears in the wall of Slade Alley. If you open it--and you should hope you don't--you'll find yourself in an impossible garden looking at the back of Slade House at a place where it absolutely cannot be. And if you venture further in, you'll soon realize that Slade House is not at all what it seems.

This is a short book, structured like a set of Chinese nesting boxes. Each story, set nine years apart, repeats and builds on the previous one. Mitchell has made an agreeably creepy contribution to the haunted house genre with Slade House, which began as a story told in a series of tweets. There are quite a lot of nice touches that startle and make us feel uneasy, the show more portraits on the walls being one of my favorite. Even more unsettling is how Mitchell plays with reality, keeping both his characters and us readers feeling off kilter, unable to trust what we are reading. I raced through the first three sections, wanting to know what came next. And here is where I feel Mitchell may have let us down somewhat. The fourth section, although it keeps up the pattern, explains perhaps too much what is going on in Slade House, at least for this reader, who prefers her ghost stories to remain uncomfortably ambiguous. And if you have already read The Bone Clocks, you will know as soon as the final section starts how things are going to go down. (I think Slade House would be more enjoyable if you read it before The Bone Clocks.) Uber-fans of the Horologists may not mind that, but I was wishing Mitchell had taken us somewhere less expected, instead of revisiting old territory. Despite these disappointments, Mitchell's writing is as good as ever, and fans of haunted house stories probably should not miss this one. show less

I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley.
I can't believe I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley. I felt a little astonished, like, surely the publisher knew that everyone who was into David Mitchell (I count myself amongst them) would rush out and buy at least one copy of Slade House. They couldn't really be offering to give me this book for free, could they?
I'd read the collected Twitter story ("The Right Sort"), which starts the whole book off, I'd been following (sporadically) the new Twitter account of @I_Bombadil, of *course* I was up for reading Slade House.
I really enjoyed the story (devoured it, even). Like a "Bone Clocks"-lite, we skip through the years, nine at a time, starting in 1979, only show more we're focused on the one house from the title and twin brother and sister who inhabit it through the years. The style remains the same throughout the years as people approach the house and enter through the alleyway, but takes on the aspect of a palimpsest, as we recognize things that have gone on before at this house, things that bleed through the same each time.
Which is true until we get to the final chapter, when the perspective shifts, and we see the story from the other side. For those people who have read much David Mitchell, when they see Dr. Marinus arrive, they'll know how this is about to play out and there might be more tension for people who haven't met any of these characters yet, but it's still an entertaining story.
I worry, a bit, for my soul, as the publisher giving away this book is a little like the lure the twins use to gather souls unto themselves, so I wonder if I haven't stumbled into my own Slade House by taking the bait and that this whole experience of reading the book hasn't been some orison-like hallucination, and I try and think back and remember if I ever ate something during the course of my reading, and, if so, whether the twins are already on their way to eat my soul. show less

Lord, that was creepily atmospheric. And I was super super into it and then...it fell down. There's a chunk of exposition in the last third that explains fucking everything which was cool, until it wasn't (and if you read this, I think you'll know what I mean). Then there's the thing that becomes the MacGuffin, that felt too convenient, in the way that villainous speeches feel too convenient. But it was definitely creepalicious and shivery, like the way [b: We Have Always Lived in the Castle|89724|We Have Always Lived in the Castle|Shirley Jackson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415357189s/89724.jpg|847007] is creepy and shivery but with more mystical woo.

Overall, I liked it, but the ending was kind of confusing. Maybe I just need to show more knuckle down and read [b: The Bone Clocks|20819685|The Bone Clocks|David Mitchell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1398205538s/20819685.jpg|26959610] because they are sorta connected. And also, I just really want to sit at the cool kids table. show less

“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/timelines/488586138048004096). It show more 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 Sally sees the ghost of DI Edmonds who gives her a weapon he “found in the cracks”: a sliver hairpin with a fox head. She finds Todd Cosgrove, who she fancies, and they try to escape. He knows a lot about the occult, and the peculiar features of Slade House, making magic symbols in the air, and talking of the orison, a lacuna, and the operandi.

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 Bond villains to come to mind). Freya is sceptical but professional.

This is the fourth chapter; I’d relaxed into the pattern and style of the story, but Fred leaves the pub, without Freya having gone to Slade House. Then time and reality start distorting, and we’re back in the attic room, with Nora and Jonah kneeling by the unflickering candle, and the narrator seeing herself between them; there’s some explanation, a bit of bickering between the twins, and then tentacles come to suck out her soul. So far, so familiar… except the forces are weakening. Freya sees Sally’s ghost use the fox-head hatpin to stab Jonah, allowing Freya to escape with her soul, though not her body. .

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

• Lacuna: “a small space that’s immune from time” so the operandi can work.

• Orison: “a reality bubble” that is “a live, 3D stage set, projected from inside this lacuna in time”, immune from photos and impenetrable by smartphones.

• Aperture: “a portal into an orison”.

• Operandi: the set up for getting psychovoltic energy from engifted souls.

• Astronaut: an orison tourist.

• Deep Stream: the good guys (Horologists).

• Shaded Way: the bad guys (Anchorites).

Links to Other Mitchell Book

My reviews of all his books are on my mitchell-uber-book shelf: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/1199525-cecily?shelf=mitchell-uber-book

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: at the end, she somehow migrates into an unborn boy (who has an older brother called Adib and an unnamed older sister), as whom, she plans to kill Marinus one day.

• “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-mitchell-interview-bone-clocks-cloud-atlas....

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/booksblog/2015/nov/10/david-mitchell-and-litera....

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/slade+house+press+release.page
http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/artsbeat/2015/01/14/new-david-mitchell-novel-com....
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/01/bff-david-mitchell-reprises-the-right-sort
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/timelines/488586138048004096 show less

Covering a parallel story to The Bone Clocks, with one or two repeating characters, Slade House uses Mitchell's characteristic device to knit together a series of effective short stories, usually distinguished by time, but allowing the overall plot to be told, layer by layer.

It starts in 1979 when an autistic boy and his mother visit a mysterious stately home, through a tiny door in a forgotten alleyway. The place initially seems friendly, enticing, but nightmarish hallucations soon take over, and supernatural twins that need to eat the souls of a certain type of person to survive prey on these unsuspecting victims.

Every 9 years, this portal opens, and a new chapter is told, with a new potential victim entering this honey trap, until show more 2015, when the twins, weakened by other half-failures, may or may not have met their match.

As usual with David Mitchell, the voicing in each mini-story is wonderfully created - vivid and exciting and varied. The plot may sound a little silly from the description above, but Mitchell, as usual, pulls it off with aplomb, such that you do believe this alternative world with its very strange rules.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, although preferred the Bone Clocks more. That felt like a far more substantive work, whereas this, at times, felt a little slight. show less

I wandered the halls of the Washington Dulles airport, desperate for something to read, and praying to find something besides Patterson and wishy washy self help books. In the nondescript bookshop near Gate C14 I chanced upon this gem, a single copy tucked just above People Magazine. My theory is that the God of Bookshops heard my pleas and wafted it in, because it is nothing like typical airport fare. A smart and entertaining ghost story, it kept me turning pages from D C to San Diego.