Description
Book Synopsis''ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANTLY INVENTIVE WRITERS OF THIS, OR ANY, COUNTRY'' INDEPENDENT
''Deliciously creepy''
SUNDAY TIMES''Irresistible''
MAIL ON SUNDAY''Skin-crawling''
OBSERVER''Manically ingenious''
GUARDIAN''An elegant fright-fest''
THE TIMESThe chilling seventh novel from the critically acclaimed author of Cloud Atlas and Utopia Avenue
Turn down Slade Alley - narrow, dank and easy to miss, even when you''re looking for it. Find the small black iron door set into the right-hand wall. No handle, no keyhole, but at your touch it swings open. Enter the sunlit garden of an old house that doesn''t quite make sense; too grand for the shabby neighbourhood, too large for the space it occupies.
A stranger greets you and invites you inside. At first, you won''t want to leave. Later, you''ll find th
Trade ReviewIngenious . . . 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 happens * Sunday Times *
Packed with heady ideas and
pulsing with dark energy . . . both
dazzlingly inventive and compulsively readable * Financial Times *
An 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 true * The Times *
A clever and deep-frozenly chilling Gothic horror story . . .
genuinely good, genuinely scary * Daily Mail *
Mitchell seamlessly brings together his clashing parallel realities through
wordplay so dazzling it seems to defy its own gravitational rules * Metro *
Chilling and dazzling . . . but the real skill of the book is in its emotional impact. Mitchell makes you care about each of the narrators * Scotland on Sunday *
Irresistible * Mail on Sunday *
Mitchell's most pleasurable book to date, which also features some of his finest writing . . .
a quiet, delightful triumph * Literary Review *
Plants 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 often -- Gillian Flynn, author of
Gone GirlA fiendish delight . . . Mitchell is something of a magician * Washington Post *
One of the most enjoyably,
deliriously frightening novels I've read in ages . . .
gleeful, skin-crawling brilliance * Observer *
His work manages to beguile, impress and delight in equal parts . . .
highly effective, creepy and witty * Irish Times *
It'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 bedtime * Independent on Sunday *
Manically 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 kitchen * Guardian *
A 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
intoxicating * Lady *
I 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 be -- Anthony Doerr, author of
All the Light We Cannot SeeCrackling with menace, yet a delightful sly wit * Sunday Mirror *
A deliciously creepy, page-turning mystery . . . Mitchell's gift for characterisation shines through, making everyone vivid * SFX *
Mitchell 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 drug * Time *
Brilliantly done,
spooky, tense and beautifully written, full of the writerly flourishes that Mitchell is rightly famous for * Daily Express *
A 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 come * San Francisco Chronicle *
The 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 * NPR *
