Slade House begins on an intriguing note, and the reader settles in for what promises to be a treat.
Slade House begins on an intriguing note, and the reader settles in for what promises to be a treat. However, coming from the author a book like The Bone Clock, David Mitchell’s new offering might disappoint you. More so if you are an Indian reader who would have come across many movies (and TV series) with a similar plot as Slade House.
Slade House is a time travelling tale of Norah and Jonah Grayer, pair of supernaturally-gifted fraternal twins committed to achieving immortality. The twins inhabit Slade House, an eerie English manor that only makes itself visible to the outside world once every nine years at the end of October.
We begin on the last Saturday in October 1979 until we reach October 2015. Empowered with occult sciences from the Middle East, they lure the “engifted” to the Slade House and suck their souls out of them. The book comprises of five stories where the above happens every time.
What started a series of tweets by the author was later developed into a full novel, that is, Slade House. The first four parts are narrated by the victims, as opposed to the final chapter in which we see Norah Greyer herself taking the position of the story-teller. We see a battle of good and evil immortals in the climax.
The reader largely knows what is going to happen eventually in every new chapter. You do not actually feel any fear for the victims. Being a horror fiction, the book fails in its elementary purpose — striking fear in the reader. The only fun (yes, fun), that is left is in watching how the various victims across the different ages commit the same mistake and fall into the trap or the orison designed by the siblings. Basically, you read chapter after chapter only to know the newest modus operandi that the twin-soul suckers have put in use/action.
After the second chapter, things start to become mechanical and repetitive. Even the dialogues between the Norah and Jonah sound very much alike. The book is not a page-turner thriller, but it is a light read with a dark theme. Although, Slade House can be read as a standalone, the book is set within Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks and has one too many references. It would be prudent to read the earlier edition for the complete enjoyment of this book.
