October 20, 2016

Slade House by David Mitchell

Slade House

Whoo boy! That was a wild ride!

Slade House is a house that only appears every 9 years. And the person who finds it disappears. In 1979 it was Rita Bishop and her autistic son Nathan. 9 years later, it was a police detective who was investigating the cold case of the Bishops' disappearance. And so on, and so forth. Each time the house appears it seems to be owned by someone different. And in the 9 years that it's not there it can't be found with land maps or Google Earth or anything.

The more you read, the more you find out about it. You find out that it is owned by a weird pair of twins. It would appear that they are over 100 years old.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of the person being lured to the house to disappear. There is always a jogger in black and orange running around as the person approaches the alley where the door to Slade House is located. I'm hoping to figure out what that is about at book club on Friday.

Without giving away spoilers, I didn't like the ending. I guess it was appropriate to the creepiness of the book, but I like a happy ending. That's all I'll say about that.

6/10 bookmarks.