Slade House
"Down the road from a working-class British pub, along the brick wall of a narrow alley, if the conditions are exactly right, you'll find the entrance to Slade House: a surreal place where visitors see what they want to see, including some things that should be impossible. Every nine years, the house's residents--an odd brother and sister--extend a unique invitation to someone who's different or lonely: a precocious teenager, a divorced policeman, a shy college student. But what really goes on inside Slade House? For those who find out, it's already too late"
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
2people
2020–2022years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- If you enjoyed The Bone Clocks, consider trying the other books in that same universe. Like The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (particularly if you enjoy its historical setting of Edo period Japan on the artificial island of Deshima where the Dutch were allowed to operate a trading post), or the shorter Slade House.
Of course Cloud Atlas is well-known and a good read.
Utopia Avenue, his latest work about a fictional band in the 1960s, is a very pleasant and frankly fun read too, although different from the others. In typical Mitchell fashion, it does loosely connect to his other works and that weird über-narrative he is building. I'm looking forward to see what he'll end up doing with that.
- The Bone Clocks and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet are both greatly entertaining novels as well (and tangentially related to both, the shorter novel Slade House).
Personally I found these more enjoyable than Cloud Atlas, which is good and a must-read nonetheless, but relies a lot on its narrative structure for its effect (this is not a negative, but the Matryoshka doll structure of the book does define it rather strongly).
- I already read Slade House, Cloud Atlas, number9dream and Ghostwritten. I'm REALLY looking forward to all the others! :)
