Slade House is the seventh novel by British novelist David Mitchell. The novel received mixed reviews. Slade House originated as a Twitter story which was then developed into a full novel, and is a companion to The Bone Clocks. Set between the late seventies and the present, the novel explores the mysterious Slade House and a number of characters who are drawn to it.
Decently written, but inexplicably boring. I've read that Mitchell's built an entire mythos, so maybe this book would've resonated more if I'd read some of his other books, but I somehow doubt it. The backstory/interview felt like scaffolding for a predictable plot.
Good, not great.
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.
