A great little supernatural tale!

Really enjoyed this - enough to write a review. It's well written and well told. Sure, it has some standard cliches and archetypal characters, but to be honest, that just helps the story race along! No need to think, just sit back and enjoy a non-challenging, high speed, stories within a story trip!

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Scintillatingly mysterious and clever

A dark and clever intrigue where you are just willing the characters not to fall into the trap. Dark but fun

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Hypersensory Extravagance

Skip to the last sentence of the last paragraph, turn left, back away slowly and that’s my review in a nutshell, no greater harm done to the reader. If you start from the beginning, however, you might notice that I’m rambling. Help is on its way.

The thing is, people keep telling me it’s already a year since ”The Bone Clocks”, David Mitchell’s latest lengthy metaphysical romp à la ”Cloud Atlas”, but I just can’t believe it. Surely it was just yesterday that I finished it, and I had to have it the day it came out. Time is out of joint, surely. Warped, even.

Yet so it goes that again, as my drives to work grow darker morning after another, and the black starlit sky makes it seem like the moon’s floating so close it’s there for the taking, Mr Mitchell starts to reappear in my dreams. This time it’s a shorter piece, a ”companion volume” to last year’s osseous timepiece. One might be tempted to disregard this one as a mere trifling afterthought, but that’s not exactly appropriate. The thing is, no matter how much I like his books, I just found ”The Bone Clocks” too long. I felt like it had said what there was to be said, and still kept saying it. Or then I’m just a git. Be that as it may, the slender appearance of ”Slade House” sure was inviting.

The premise is delicious. A mysterious ghost story of a haunted house that seems to exist in a sort of parallel, metaphysical dimension that’s only occasionally accessible. Wonderful stuff!

The book gets on wonderfully. ”The Right Sort” is irresistibly tasty. The constant sense of something askew lingers behind every page. Everything about it is perfect. ”Shining Armour” is almost as good. These stories attack you right away. No explanations, not even an attempt at a discussion or a friendly warning. It is indeed the sort of work the dark evenings of late autumn and winter were created for. In terms of its metaphysical aspirations it wouldn’t be too dissimilar to Philip K. Dick’s explorations of reality, or Murakami’s wild existential labyrinths. But on the other hand, it aligns itself well with the classical tradition of literary horror, be it Western (Lovecraft, Poe) or Asian (”Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio”, ”Tales of Moonlight and Rain”).

But by the third story, ”Oink Oink”, it has become apparent exactly how deep-rooted ”Slade House” is in ”The Bone Clocks”. This means that ultimately the mystery aspect vanishes, and almost half of the work is spent waiting how the inevitable resolution, itself equally apparent as seen in the context of last year’s novel, will pan out. ”You Dark Horse You” and ”Astronaut” wrap the story up, but now it’s become more exposition than anything, and the nature of the novel has changed dramatically. The suspense is gone.

As such, I admit I’m let down. Three-fifths of a great thing leaves so much to be desired for since you know how good the whole thing would have tasted. I felt like a new and adventurous road was opening up ahead of me, only turning into the one I travel to work every single day. I seriously need to listen to ”Black Swan Green” to try to get back on track, since this is the second Mitchell in a row I’ve been critical about. Help is on its way.

The work of Thomas Judd and Tania Rodrigues warrants mention. Although I’m not too partial to Rodrigues’s delivery of ”Oink Oink”, what’s good about their narration is how they’re treading with a light step, something inherent in the text as well. This feels, after all, a bit like the hypersensory extravagance of ”Hausu” (1977), where everything in the genre comes together, goes through a whirl in a blender and is splattered on the wall in an explosion of style and characterization. At times, though, it feels a bit too elaborate, a similar problem I’m having with Dick Hill’s reading of ”Against the Day”, whose performance everybody seems to love.

I think much will be written about whether ”Slade House” is really a novel, a novella, a collection of short stories or something else entirely. But as a work of fiction, it keeps it short and sweet, at least for the most part. Those who have been enthusiastic about ”The Bone Clocks” will probably be enthusiastic about ”Slade House” much for the same reasons.

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19 people found this helpful

Enjoyable

I enjoyed this book. Not as scary as I thought it would be but that's no bad thing. Just one very tiny point though- Ely is not in Norfolk it's in Cambridgeshire!!

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Exciting mini sequel to the wonderful Bone Clocks

For those who love the world created in Bone Clocks. Here is a mini follow up.

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Like short stories

Easy to get through but absorbing. A rollicking read. would definitely recommend this audio book.

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Never a dull moment

Another brilliant story from this author. The twist at the end was unexpected. Narrators perfect choice.

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Gripping and twisty

Lovely flexible, interesting narration of a good solid story, with Mitchell’s characteristic multiple viewpoints.
I loved the ending but it holds much more meaning if you have read his other books.
Really sparkling and properly scary - I would listen to the whole thing again!

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I wanted to REALLY love this ...

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The formula of 'hooking, capturing, disposing of' the characters - it just repeated all the time. The first time it happened it absorbed your attention with fascination, and ended with shock. But after that, the book simply repeated that formula I lost count of how many times. It meant you didn't really become attached to any of the characters or care about them because it became 'oh-oh, I know what's going to happen to them ...' and it did. The basic framework of the novel had something to it as a story, but that intricate story became fragmented by getting caught in the repeat loop of going through the characters' repeat experiences. Imagine reading Hansel and Gretel from the perspective of the stories of all the children who went before - went in woods, found house, ate candy, *died* [repeat].

It would have been more shocking had, perhaps, one character discovered lots of previous victims and the 'reveal' being that character walking in while one was going through 'the process' - particularly with the additional reveal as to who the 'final character' actually was.

I found after the first character as soon as 'Slade House' was mentioned I'd already jumped to 'their end' mentally and knew what it would be. And I never had time to bond with the final character who was very important because my mind had already prepared her as a victim. If it was me, I'd restructure the book so the final character was in at the start and was investigating disappearances of the others, that you became to passionately care about that character, and then the final 'reveal' about who that character was would have been a huge shock. But I was really disappointed after having started out really wanting to love this book.

What will your next listen be?

Currently listening to Pompei - The Life of a Roman Town by Mary Beard. I absolutely love it - the town of Pompei and it's population are very much brought to life, and you can visualise things like the water running in torrents down the middle of the road explaining why they built high pavements with stepping stone crossings in the road.

Which character – as performed by Tania Rodrigues and Thomas Judd – was your favourite?

None - the book didn't develop in a way so that you cared about the characters; they just became 'plot-fodder'. Even the final character who should have been pivotal, I didn't care about because I'd already made my mind up they were also either going to simply be fodder, or would solve the plot. Even the brother/sister didn't develop sufficiently for them to become 3-dimensional and for me to care about them in either loving/empathising/hating them - a shame also, because they also had potential to become complex characters that put you into a moral dilemma.

Do you think Slade House needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No - it's been set up that way due to what happens with one of the characters at the end. But I can't possibly read that repeat formula anymore - sorry! :o)

Any additional comments?

It's a shame, because I think if more help had been given regarding the structure/presentation of the story it would have been a complete 'Wow!' as a book. But it reads - as Richard Herring describes - like 'Ten little monkeys jumping on the bed; one fell off and broke his head ...Nine little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and broke his head ...Eight little monkeys ...'. It didn't need to be laid out like that for readers. Imagine if that became 'Ten monkeys have died under extremely mysterious circumstances and we're going to find out why ...'.

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12 people found this helpful

Unexpected.

Unexpectedly surprising. Sinister without being chilling or terrifying. Wouldn’t be surprised to find this becoming a film.

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