One might assume that Gone Girl's Gillian Flynn wouldn't spook easily,or that,lauded as she is for creating a skin-crawlingly creepy tale,she might somehow be hardened to effects of the thriller genre. Yet of David Mitchell's Slade House she admits:'Plants died,milk curdled,and my children went slightly feral as I succumbed to (its) creepy magic. It's a wildly inventive,chilling,and - for all its otherworldliness - wonderfully human haunted house story.'Spawned from a short story that Mitchell first published on Twitter,Slade House is his shortest book at just 200 pages and like Cloud Atlas,is a collection of novellas housed together within a single cover. Each is set nine years after the one before it when,on the last Saturday of October,the impossible-to-discover Slade House welcomes a new visitor - a visitor who will never leave,as his or her soul is feasted upon by the twin Anchorite cult-members Jonah and Norah,in order to sustain their youth. True to form,Mitchell includes plenty of reference to his previous novels (although it isn't necessary to have read them in order to enjoyably consume this one). But there is something new here that hasn't before been as fully explored by the award-winning author (and that might surprise given the book's frightening premise): total hilarity of the all-out,farce-laden,parody-filled variety.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Hodder & StoughtonISBN: 9781473616707Number of pages: 240Weight: 174 gDimensions: 198 x 130 x 16 mm
MEDIA 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 happensPacked with heady ideas and pulsing with dark energy...both dazzlingly inventive and compulsively readableAn 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 trueA clever and deep-frozenly chilling Gothic horror story...genuinely good,genuinely scaryMitchell seamlessly brings together his clashing parallel realities through wordplay so dazzling it seems to defy its own gravitational rulesChilling and dazzling...but the real skill of the book is in its emotional impact. Mitchell makes you care about each of the narratorsIrresistibleMitchell's most pleasurable book to date,which also features some of his finest writing...a quiet,delightful triumphPlants 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 oftenA fiendish delight...Mitchell is something of a magicianOne of the most enjoyably,deliriously frightening novels I've read in ages...gleeful,skin-crawling brillianceHis work manages to beguile,impress and delight in equal parts...highly effective,creepy and wittyIt'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 bedtimeManically 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 kitchenA 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 intoxicatingI 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 beCrackling with menace,yet a delightful sly witA deliciously creepy,page-turning mystery ...Mitchell's gift for characterisation shines through,making everyone vividMitchell flits among the realest of voices - a shy teenage girl,a washed-up cop - in the most supernatural of settings: a brilliant,career-long high-wire act. If you haven't read him yet,Slade House is your 238-page,pocket-size gateway drugBrilliantly done,spooky,tense and beautifully written,full of the writerly flourishes that Mitchell is rightly famous forA 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 comeThe joy in Slade House is in the discovery. It's in seeing different people make the same mistakes over and over again...It's in thinking that you'd be smarter,of course. That you'd see through all this B-movie schlock (like creepy portraits,sad ghosts and stairways that go nowhere),find the secret door,and escape. Only to find that you're already trapped
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