Slade House
The chilling and bewitching novel by the acclaimed author of CLOUD ATLAS
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Slade House
Narrated by:
Tania Rodrigues, Thomas Judd
Buy Now for £12.20
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Narrated by:
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Tania Rodrigues
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Thomas Judd
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By:
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David Mitchell
Summary
Born out of the short story David Mitchell published on Twitter in 2014 and inhabiting the same universe as his latest bestselling novel The Bone Clocks, this is the perfect book to curl up with on a dark and stormy night.
Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you're looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn't quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies.
A stranger greets you by name and invites you inside. At first, you won't want to leave. Later, you'll find that you can't.
This unnerving, taut and intricately woven tale by one of our most original and bewitching writers begins in 1979 and reaches its turbulent conclusion around Hallowe'en, 2015. Because every nine years, on the last Saturday of October, a 'guest' is summoned to Slade House. But why has that person been chosen, by whom and for what purpose? The answers lie waiting in the long attic, at the top of the stairs...
(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton©2015 David Mitchell
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Critic reviews
Ingenious . . . a deliciously creepy story to be read for plot and for pleasure, with your heart racing, and your eyes involuntarily skipping forwards to find out what happens
Packed with heady ideas and pulsing with dark energy . . . both dazzlingly inventive and compulsively readable
An elegant fright-fest of the highest order . . . Mitchell masterfully, humorously, combines the classic components of a scary story - old house, dark alley, missing persons - with a realism, when describing the lives of the victims, that is pacy, funny and true
A clever and deep-frozenly chilling Gothic horror story . . . genuinely good, genuinely scary
Mitchell seamlessly brings together his clashing parallel realities through wordplay so dazzling it seems to defy its own gravitational rules
Chilling and dazzling . . . but the real skill of the book is in its emotional impact. Mitchell makes you care about each of the narrators
Irresistible
Mitchell's most pleasurable book to date, which also features some of his finest writing . . . a quiet, delightful triumph
Plants died, milk curdled, and my children went slightly feral as I succumbed to the creepy magic of David Mitchell's Slade House. It's a wildly inventive, chilling, and - for all its other-worldiness - wonderfully human haunted house story. I plan to return to its clutches quite often (Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl)
A fiendish delight . . . Mitchell is something of a magician
One of the most enjoyably, deliriously frightening novels I've read in ages . . . gleeful, skin-crawling brilliance
His work manages to beguile, impress and delight in equal parts . . . highly effective, creepy and witty
It's a gripping premise which becomes increasingly suspenseful as the stories move closer to the present day . . . Be warned, this is not a book to read before bedtime
Manically ingenious . . . Vending-machine horror tropes, believable characters, wild farce, existential jeopardy, meta-fictional jokes: into the cauldron they go. Mitchell is at home in this kitchen
A marvellously horrific, sharp and concise masterpiece . . . The novel's brevity should not lead the reader to underestimate just how much punch Mitchell's prose packs. His fiction is intoxicating
I gulped down this novel in a single evening. Intricately connected to David Mitchell's previous books, this compact fantasy burns with classic Mitchellian energy. Painstakingly imagined and crackling with narrative velocity, it's a Dracula for the new millennium, a Hansel and Gretel for grownups, a reminder of how much fun fiction can be (Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See)
Crackling with menace, yet a delightful sly wit
A deliciously creepy, page-turning mystery . . . Mitchell's gift for characterisation shines through, making everyone vivid
Since finishing my listen I have learned that this has been described as "an expanded short story." Not sure whether this helps explain my disappointment, but certainly I felt it lacked some of the richness of his more substantial novels. It still has one of Mitchell's trademarks - the multiple linked storylines, and there is plenty of wit on display as we steadily learn more about the psychic goings-on down the dark alley that occasionally leads to Slade House.
So, perhaps my problem was the narration, especially the first section. An adult trying to sound like a young person is rarely convincing and in this case, I found it grating on the ear. And I thought both narrators too often gave emphasis to the wrong word or phrase, which left me feeling they either didn't understand what Mitchell has written - or maybe that they were under too much pressure to get the job done without going back for edits.
If you are already a fan, and especially if you have read and enjoyed The Bone Clocks, do have a listen and make your own mind up. But if you are new to Mitchell's wonderful books, I would recommend listening to at least one of the others I have mentioned before this one.
Good, but a bit disappointing for this fan.....
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A pre- The Bone Clocks novel
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What made the experience of listening to Slade House the most enjoyable?
Thomas Judd is one of my favourite voice artists and his rendition of "Nathan" at the beginning of this novel is excellent. Slade House is a "short story" but it's a proper novella so there's time for the story to develop even though it isn't overlong.Who was your favorite character and why?
It's hard to have a favourite, since the overarching characters are the horrible ones. I did like the way that Nathan was written though, and I thought Sally was the most sympathetic.Which character – as performed by Tania Rodrigues and Thomas Judd – was your favourite?
The performance by Thomas Judd of an aspergers child was extremely sympathetic and very well done.Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
No, it isn't that sort of bookAny additional comments?
This is a "horror" story by genre, but it's really a thriller mystery with some ghostly horror thrown in. But for the absolute last gasp paragraph or two I would have given it 5 stars, I just didn't like the ending, but that is totally personal preference.A great listen with a slightly disappointing endin
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This story messes with your mind!
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Unexpected.
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