12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=8dddd248-4fe5-4d72-8358-4bb93ce8bfb8&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/4HomeTop Picks: All BooksSlade House MoreSlade Houseby David MitchellPrice: $26.00(Hardcover)Published: October 27, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: The New York Times bestseller by theauthor of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | A PublishersWeekly Literary Fiction Top 10 Pick for Fall 2015Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brickwall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll findthe entrance to Slade House.</p><p> A stranger will greet you by nameand invite you inside.</p><p> At first, you won’t want to leave.</p><p> Later, you’llfind that you can’t.</p><p> Every nine years, the house’s residents—anodd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someonewho’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recentlydivorced policeman, a shy college student.</p><p> But what really goes oninside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . ..Spanning five decades,…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This BookGo to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=8dddd248-4fe5-4d72-8358-4bb93ce8bfb8&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/4 Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayExpect the unexpected from David Mitchell.</p><p> Fine, but what I didn't expect was a novel that is fairly conventional, rightdown to its pat, familiar finale.</p><p> It's a haunted house sort of horror story that I imagine may fall through the cracks.</p><p> It'sprobably not horrific enough for fans of that genre.</p><p> And more literary types may be off-put by soul-sucking demonsresiding in a mysterious mansion that only materializes once every nine years in a cut-through found in a run-downneighborhood of London.</p><p> Being written by Mitchell, it is of course more complex and well-written than most horrortales, so it will everyone's loss.</p><p> It's not a home run like one has come to expect from Mitchell but it is an intriguingand solid effort nonetheless.</p><p> The novel is split into five sections that slowly reveal the pattern of what is actually goingon. it starts off with a bang, featuring a lonely boy (presumably on the autism spectrum) who is dragged to a tea partyby his social-climbing mother in 1979.</p><p> Our sympathies are entirely with the boy as he's befriended by another oddchild at Slade House and they play and gambol until the horror slips in.</p><p> Mitchell's envisioning of our souls is bothsimple and memorable, making it all the worse when they are gobbled up by the baddies.</p><p> And so we march throughthe years: a detective, a group of X-Files type college students having a lark by investigating paranormal activity(whoops! they discover some), a journalist interviewing a nutter who claims said paranormal activity is part of aninternational conspiracy and so on.</p><p> Mitchell brings these cardboard characters fully to life, which makes the fate wesuspect awaits them all the more distressing. (And which may explain why most typical horror fare does not maketheir victims so believable: it's not as fun to watch real people die.) But he stumbles on the inevitable twist, both to theperspective of the villains and the vampire-hunters (for lack of a better word) that track them.</p><p> I was a little confusedby the "rules" of this world (specifically how victims could linger and help others fight back).</p><p> I didn't want those rulesspelled out but I wanted to believe the author knew them and abided by them, but I didn't.</p><p> And the ending is just notsatisfying.</p><p> Still, he's too good a writer not to give this ghost story some genuine creeps and real pathos.</p><p> The first fewsections in particular are full engaging.</p><p> And he maintains your allegiance by wondering what Mitchell will do next. --Michael GiltzLessWhat Others Say“Devilishly fun.”—The Washington Post “Entertainingly eerie . . .</p><p> Slade House boils down to [David] Mitchell’s take on the classic ghost story, complete withhis version of a haunted house. . . .</p><p> The last thing we expected from Mitchell is simplicity, but here it is, burnished toa hellish bronze.”—Chicago Tribune “A ripping yarn . . .</p><p> Like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House or the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining, [SladeHouse] is a thin sliver of hell designed to entrap the unwary. . . .</p><p> As the Mitchellverse grows ever more expansive andconnected, this short but powerful novel hints at still more marvels to come.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Like Stephen King in a fever . . . manically ingenious.”—The Guardian (U.K.) “Slade House, the tricky new confection by David Mitchell, is a haunted house story that savors of Dickens, Stephen
