4.5 stars. I inhaled this slim David Mitchell novel in just a few hours yesterday. I was so pleased by Cloud Atlas earlier this year that I nearly jumped for joy when I heard he was putting out a haunted house story just in time for Halloween. I hardly ever dabble in the horror genre, but I’m glad I made an exception. While this book was definitely creepy, it wasn’t overly scary. It propelled me to keep reading and find out what happened next, but it’s not the kind of thing that’ll give you nightmares or anything.
Just like Cloud Atlas, Slade House is told through a series of novellas, jumping time in-between each one. These are set 9 years apart, going from the 1970s to present day. The entrance to Slade House lies in one of the smallest alleys in England and the small metal door only shows itself to people it wants to come in. Over the decades, several people get lured to Slade Alley and find the door. I don’t want to say too much about the plot for fear that I’ll ruin the suspense for future readers.
I haven’t read most of Mitchell’s work, but I’d imagine that this is probably the most accessible novel he’s written. Definitely more accessible than Cloud Atlas anyway. It helps that at 224 pages, it’s quite slim. His character work is spot on. When you’re working with a series of novellas, you really need the characters to jump off the page and be fully dimensional from the start or else nobody will care about your book. These character are beautifully rendered and feel more real than some characters from other books that I spent the entire novel with. The structure of shorter stories with time gaps really works for this foray into horror. Each time jump ratchets up the tension just a little bit more. I really admire Mitchell in that he’s managed to create a novel that feels rich and expansive even though it’s so short. Super impressive, crazily fun.
