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    Slade House: A Novel
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    Slade House: A Novel
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    Slade House: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Slade House: A Novel

    Written by David Mitchell

    Narrated by Thomas Judd and Tania Rodrigues

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The New York Times bestseller by the author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, National Post, BookPage, and Kirkus Reviews

    Keep your eyes peeled for a small black iron door.

    Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you’ll find the entrance to Slade House. A stranger will greet you by name and invite you inside. At first, you won’t want to leave. Later, you’ll find that you can’t. Every nine years, the house’s residents—an odd brother and sister—extend a unique invitation to someone who’s different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a recently divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it’s already too late. . . .

    Spanning five decades, from the last days of the 1970s to the present, leaping genres, and barreling toward an astonishing conclusion, this intricately woven novel will pull you into a reality-warping new vision of the haunted house story—as only David Mitchell could imagine it.

    Praise for Slade House

    “A fiendish delight . . . Mitchell is something of a magician.”—The Washington Post

    “Entertainingly eerie . . . We turn to [Mitchell] for brain-tickling puzzle palaces, for character studies and for language.”—Chicago Tribune

    “A ripping yarn . . . Like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House or the Overlook Hotel from Stephen King’s The Shining, [Slade House] is a thin sliver of hell designed to entrap the unwary. . . . As the Mitchellverse grows ever more expansive and connected, 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.)

    “A haunted house story that savors of Dickens, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling and H. P. Lovecraft, but possesses more psychic voltage than any of them.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

    “Tightly crafted and suspenseful yet warmly human . . . the ultimate spooky nursery tale for adults.”—The Huffington Post
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 27, 2015
    ISBN9781101923689
    Unavailable
    Slade House: A Novel

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    Reviews for Slade House

    4/5

    1,182 ratings132 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The ending is a bit abrupt. Where did Dr. Iris Marinus-Fenby come from? The last chapter also introduced a few totally new elements. Nevertheless, it is an interesting and absorbing read. The scene where Iris reveals herself to the Grayers at the hospital and outwits them was fascinating. Mitchell writes well and the dialogues feel real. He unveils the mystery of the Grayers layer by layer, sucking you in. Worth a read.
    • 4/5
      Is it the best David Mitchell I have read? No, it is not. Is it better than most other books out there? It is. I enjoyed it, really. And I don't really like horror for the most part. If the characters were a little more fully drawn it could have been a home run. A fun and light read for the immortality crowd.
    • 4/5
      this one, about immortality and ghosts and of course time, is just okay. seemed a bit on the shallow side for Mitchell, but i've never been big on paranormal plots, so YMMD. nevertheless i confess that i was most excited when a couple of indelible characters from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet emerged briefly from another time, because i love his tendency to fold in recurring characters.
    • 3/5
      While this takes place in Mitchell’s larger magical realism universe and readers of his other books will recognise characters and places it can absolutely be read alone. Although perhaps the ‘twist’ would not be to all readers tastes. Personally having read both The Bone Clocks and Utopia Avenue I felt comfortable sinking back into Mitchell’s world.
      As with his other works this story is told by several separate characters. Each could nearly stand alone as short stories themselves but as we continue through the pages the stories all add up to an ending that suits it’s dark setting.  It would be interesting to see the response to the last ‘chapter’ from a reader who doesn’t know the world as characters we meet and actions that must be taken were known to me and I wonder how it would read to a complete novice.  As this lands in the larger Mitchell universe it may not be essential reading but it is a nice diversion adding layers to his already deeply populated world. 
    • 2/5
      This is fun, but it has the same problem as its predecessor; it's over-explained. If Steven King says a house is haunted because a tormented dog or a zebra used to live there and its ghost now has a vendetta against the descendants of their neighbors, we understand the premise and we don't need to take notes to absorb it all. Mr. Mitchell has created a detailed alternative supernatural reality with elaborate terminology and his characters have to pause, as in a bad radio play, and explain it to us. It's similar to the scene where the bad guy has the half-drugged superhero tied to a chair, but pauses before killing him to tell his life story. The advantage of Slade House over The Bone Clocks is that it is shorter.
    • 4/5
      So. What I thought was a haunted house story is more of a soul vampire story. Or rather, a collection of stories that all connect.

      I've not read any of David Mitchell's other books so I had no knowledge of how he sprinkles characters and concepts across all his novels. It didn't really detract from my enjoyment in any way, because they didn't stick out particularly strongly.

      I found Slade House compelling reading, though I never really connected to anything.
    • 3/5
      This is massively inventive. A pair of twins have discovered how to halt time and evade death by storing their bodies in a secret location where time is stopped. Only problem is that this mechanism need to be recharged every 9 years with a soul of someone with psychic powers.
      We follow 4 different "guests" as they visit Slade House, are lured in and their soul devoured. The way that each guest is able to communicate with the next, but is not always successful in being able to prevent what takes place adds to the horror of it all.
      After the second I was wondering how the author would bring this cycle to a close. It takes a bit of trickery to do so, and that felt a little bit at odds with the remainder of the book. It was all very well constructed, it felt largely self consistent. The final chapter did feel slightly at odds with the previous ones though, and I can't quite put my finger on why.
    • 3/5
      Okay, so I might officially be getting sick of David Mitchell's shtick. His time-travelling, genre-hopping narratives were what initially got me hooked on his writing, but here they just induced some major eye-rolling. I read the first chapter and thought, "This is like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." I then read the second chapter and thought, "This is like Filth."

      Mitchell is a lot like J. K. Rowling in that he has all these back stories and connections between his characters. But at least Rowling has a website where she reveals all this information for free. If The Bone Clocks is akin to the Extended Edition of Mitchell's catalog, then Slade House is the unnecessary splitting of Bone Clocks into two separate works.
    • 4/5
      Very, very strange and wonderful. A set of interlinked stories through which the big picture is slowly revealed. Also, this is very creepy. I would classify it as horror for people who want to be unsettled but not terrified.
    • 5/5
      I love David Mitchell's books! His genre is slightly fantasy/spooky which isn't my preferred area of reading, but his writing and characterisation is so good, that I happily head off into his foreign waters.
      Slade House is a liitle more out there than his other books, but the writing!! The book is structured around a sequence of five events occuring at 9 year intervals. Each event has its own cast, and Mitchell paints these new characters with his customary verve. It's like the very best of short story writing, with the bonus that the events link together to make a coherent whole.
    • 4/5
      I liked this! After the first chapter, I wasn't completely on board, but once I got through the second characters story, I was hooked. I loved seeing what elements re-appeared within each chapter and how it all came together in the end. I was satisfied with how the story wrapped up, though I wish the last chapter had been a little longer so that it could have been fleshed out a little bit more. This is a short book. My copy was only 238 pages and I read it in less than a day. However, those pages pack a punch. Some people describe this as a series of 5 interconnected stories, but I think this book did a better job with a logical progression of revealing the story of the Slade House than that description would suggest. This story is written in the first person so if you don't like that, this book might not be for you. But, if you get passed the first chapter and the sort of vague language, I think you can really like this book!
    • 4/5
      I didn’t care for the ending, but everything before it was truly disturbing and haunting.
    • 4/5
      Creepy, well written, but resolution maybe explains too.much.
    • 3/5
      And it's set up for a sequel.
    • 3/5
      A house that only appears every 9 years with two of the strangest ‘ghosts’ ever sounds like the recipe for a true scare, but I never found this book frightening. The story’s told in 9 year breaks by each consecutive visitor, and like the one who believes she’s on a drug-induced trip, that’s how much of this book came across. Perhaps a little too surreal for me with too many obscure references in parts, though nothing that stops you from understanding the basis of what’s happening. Still, there’s something persuasive about the story and the writing which acts like glue. I’ve heard it’s a companion piece to The Bone Clocks, and as I’ve not read that, perhaps it’s why this fell short for me; alas, this didn’t entice me to pick it up the other novel (maybe one day but not immediately). Much of Mitchell’s writing has a dreamlike quality that pulls me in both directions, offering both something fascinating and yet inexplicable, leaving me uncertain as to my level of like/dislike. I guess the best word I have for this is intriguing.
    • 3/5
      3 stars is generous but I like David Mitchell's writing.
    • 4/5
      Creepy!! This is definitely not my usual genre, but the book's appearance was so intriguing that I pulled it off the library shelf. I think reading Mitchell's book The Bone Clocks (which I haven't) might better prepare you for this, but I found it to be a stand-alone in terms of characters and action. Each chapter has a year, which proves to be important later when more is revealed, but if you crack the pattern sooner, kudos to you. Each chapter also has its own little story until another pattern emerges held together by a tenuous thread of a questionable witness to what exactly? A woman and her son disappear -- and were last seen in a hard-to-find alley in London -- Fred Pink, the window-washer who saw them, has been in a coma for years. The cop who investigates the disappearance also disappears. But you get the disappeared's perspective on events: it begins with Slade Alley, in search of Slade House which is found through a little iron door in the brick wall which opens -- if you have the right touch among other things -- into a beautiful garden -- grounds really, which don't seem like they could even spatially fit in the area among established buildings. And within the garden and house you find people who validate you and like the things you like and understand you -- a famous musician, a childhood playmate, a beautiful woman, a model-handsome foreign exchange student, etc. and you lose all track of time, and you lose all track of reality until you realize you are prey. Captivated? Revealing much else would set off Spoiler Alerts all over the place. The principal players are Norah and Jonah Grayer when they aren't assuming other identities and forms, but truly knowing who they are takes the majority of the book. The ending gets a little too paranormal/X-files for me with lucunae and orisons and other abstract things it is hard to wrap the head around, but it's a compelling read in an Escher-esque reality like the cover suggests. It'll hook you too!
    • 4/5
      What is this? Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror? Hard to say really, another of those books that are kinda hard to place, I think it is what this guy does, he goes to other places.

      I picked it up then read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then after a few days I couldn't recall a thing about it. Like chimera, very real when it's real but almost transparent when it's not.

      Definitely worth the bother.
    • 3/5
      We're back in the world of 'The Bone Clocks', and things are not going well for our narrators. Once again the story is gripping, except when it goes into the details of how things work. It's more like hard sci-fi in that sense. Sometimes you just let the reader be ignorant. That's the way it is in real life. There are no explanations!
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this spooky, clever book and marveled at the way David Mitchell managed to trick me every time. He's a master of creating little worlds and taking on new voices, and I always enjoy stepping into them, if only for a chapter.
    • 5/5
      Brilliantly written. Superbly interwoven stories, perfectly fitting together. And quite creepy...! Definitely a must read novel. 5 stars
    • 5/5
      4.5 stars!

      When I saw this was available on audio from the library I jumped right on it, and I'm glad I did!

      This was an entertaining and imaginative story. It's not really horror, but it's not really fantasy or sci-fi either. I guess I'd call it an amalgamation of all of those genres.

      Whatever you want to label it, go ahead! I'm just going to say it was a hell of a story and I enjoyed it a lot.

      Highly recommended!
    • 5/5
      I've only read one other novel by David Mitchell -- Cloud Atlas, which I generally enjoyed but it didn't inspire me to to pick up any of his other books either. A friend recommended "Slade House" so I thought I'd give it a read and I have to say I enjoyed it so much that I'll definitely be reading more by Mitchell in the future.

      This short book was apparently originally written via Twitter confines of 140 character sentences. Each chapter focuses on a person who is lured into the world of Slade House -- a mysterious place that appears in an alleyway every nine years. The backstory behind Slade House and its residents unfold as the chapters progress.

      This is one of those books that I kept thinking about throughout the day until I could back to it. A fun and interesting story.
    • 3/5
      Disappointing. From all the reviews I expected scary - it really wasn't.

      EDIT: revising my review, because it wasn't scary initially. But in the weeks since I finished it, it's been creeping up on me. Well done, David Mitchell.
    • 3/5
      Not his best. Maybe because I've read all his books, but this felt like I'd seen it all before, and he didn't bring anything new to the table.
    • 5/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Feels like a fan-only add on to The Bone Clocks. I'm a fan so I loved it, but this must be problematic for people coming to this blind expecting a straightforward slice of literary fiction.
    • 4/5

      I just finished reading this in a single climb, while the rain crackled outside, but that wasn't in the Script. The Script foretells of the last Saturday in October and a rather strange house. Some of the creaking description made me check the windows and peer nervously to the floorboards, imagining the basement below. There is something in Slade House about portraits, whispers and there's that quicksilver word orisons. It wasn't that I shuddered in the wake of the Script, I mean, well, WE, haven't lived here for 9 years yet, and we were actually brought together by David Mitchell. It was a cinnamon time in 2002 when we burned off screeds of emails to each other daily. Books and backpacking were our spinal column: I won't mention Providence. Ghostwritten was a link, a bond across continents. So, still maybe some projection was at play, why then didn't I follow the Script?

      A)Slade House was on my porch when I came home from lunch today, what could one expect?

      B) I have yet to read Bone Clocks, which apparently hovers about this tale and the fact remains I bought Bone Clocks for her for her birthday. I may be lost but I do retain a sense of propriety.
    • 5/5
      Mitchell is a master!
    • 4/5
      Slade House ushers the reader into a Palladian story cycle: evidently this approach is a David Mitchell trademark. The design is intricate and clever, and while initially the situation is Weird and odd, the further along I read, the clearer became the rational design. The unfolding story is both satisfying and anticlimactic ... so very clever how well the nested pieces fit, but anticlimactic in that the oddness of the tale is undercut by so rational an account.

      And yet! --were the uncanny elements coddled / amplified / multiplied, I'd likely be confused as to the larger tale, likely not grasp the design or overall consistency, and that understanding is central to a full appreciation of the denouement. Mitchell perhaps sacrificed effect for the larger meaning of his tale, effectively creating a lasting weight that simply wouldn't be there for me had the Weird distorted the structure.

      This reading prompted as a Hallowe'en indulgence, somewhat on a whim and enabled by readily available copies on my local's shelves. Cloud Atlas already had a place on my recon list. Think now I'll prioritise other books in the Horologists series.