But, on the whole, their stories feel layered and deeply thought out. At times Michell scrambles too much to invoke an atmosphere for the time period by flipping through news events or popular culture from the time period so it can begin to read like a wikipedia page for the year in question. Mitchell confidently brings in points of reference from the high-brow like famed musician Yehudi Menuhin to the ever-loveable Miss Piggy. Even with an unlikeable character like Inspector Gordon Edmonds who makes sexist and racist remarks, he's a dynamic and vivid personality who is engaging to read about. Switching between all the different personalities I listed above over a 36 year time period could feel jarring to a reader, but Mitchell uses choice details and compelling voices which grab your attention. This makes “Slade House” a much more fast-paced and thrilling read.ĭavid Mitchell is such a skilled writer in the way he quickly and convincingly creates narrators that are immediately identifiable. “Slade House” is only 240 pages compared to “The Bone Clocks” which totals 640 pages. The difference is that the length of “Slade House” better suits this technique. One by one these people are lured to a grand old house and then they are never seen again. He uses the same structure in “Slade House” building quieter short tales of an insecure boy, a philandering detective inspector, a teenage girl self conscious about her weight, a lesbian journalist and a black Canadian psychiatrist into a chilling narrative of a pair of twins' paranormal existence. This is the reason I put aside “The Bone Clocks” because I didn't care enough about the supernatural elements that tied disparate stories set in different time periods together.

This was most successfully realized in his tremendous novel “Cloud Atlas.” The problem is that I come to feel really involved with some of the smaller enclosed stories and grow impatient with the larger all-encompassing story.

I was hesitant about reading “Slade House” when it came out a few months ago because I didn't finish his previous novel “The Bone Clocks.” Mitchell's recurring technique is to write really involving smaller realistic stories within larger, ambitious and fantastical narratives that say something meaningful about time and humanity.

Slade house