No other book this year has made me feel quite so uneasy. Slade House started life as a Twitter story that Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell wrote in 140 character bursts, picking up on a strand first formulated in The Bone Clocks, his 2014 Man Booker longlisted blockbuster of a novel. He ran with it, turning a Twitter tale into a sinister yarn that begins innocently enough – a musical mother and her nerdy son visit a rather grand residence down an alley by the name of Slade – and then drags you into a mysterious, fog-strewn house that neither you, nor its guests, can escape.
Jumping through time in nine-year intervals, starting in 1979 and culminating in 2015, Mitchell traces a series of ominous ‘open days’ at Slade House, where the guests stack up, the hosts lose their shine and glimpses of the truth begin to filter through the cracks.
Utterly absorbing, Mitchell fanatics will also enjoy spotting all the links and references to characters that pop up in his other books. But will they all get their comeuppance?
