I can’t end this year without talking about Slade House, David Mitchell‘s latest novel. It’s been out for a few months, but I just managed to get my hands on it and devour it.
But first (and briefly), I’ll explain the numbering in the title. Slade House is the 15th book I’ve reviewed on this blog this year but the 42nd book I’ve read (according to Goodreads). No, I’m not going to hit my goal of 50 this year, but I’ll talk about that later.
So. Slade House. It’s my fourth Mitchell novel. First came Cloud Atlas, then The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, then The Bone Clocks, all of which I’ve talked about here. Mitchell intrigues me, and Slade House has only added to my interest. At this rate, I’ll be a fanatic before long.
It’s a genre-bender: a supernatural mystery of sorts. Every nine years, something happens at Slade House, and each of these occurrences has its own story with its own first-person narrator. The first is a boy, brought there by his mother, who expects to meet musical society-types there, sort of reliving her past. The boy meets a new friend in the garden, and they play a game that ends in everything going strange – and eventually wrong. Nine years later, a policeman finds the house, and something similar happens. Every nine years, the same thing.
Of course, things eventually become more complicated, and we get closer and closer to figure out what’s really going on. So it’s basically a ghost story about a mysterious house, but since it’s David Mitchell, it’s not quite that simple, and it’s tied to some of his other books, especially The Bone Clocks. (The connections are bonus-level: you really don’t have to have read The Bone Clocks to know what’s going on.) It’s a super-fun quick read.
Mitchell has several other books that I haven’t read yet, but I liked Slade House enough that I’m going to move them up in my TBR Pile. I’ll do my best not to reread Cloud Atlas or The Bone Clocks anytime soon, but no promises. Since I’m reading relatively little right now, I’d like to stick to books I haven’t read.
Which all means that you should run to your local library or bookstore and get your hands on a copy of Slade House. You won’t regret it. I generally hate mysteries, but I guess the ghost story part was enough to hold my interest. And if you’ve read Bone Clocks, you definitely need to read it. Drop what you’re doing and go.
Featured image credit: Elliott Brown
