Most notably, a doctor from Mitchell’s 2010 novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet plays a significant role in the the novel’s key final chapter.

One of the narrators is a magazine writer for Spyglass, which exists in Cloud Atlas.

Danielewski’s The Fifty-Year Sword, another change-of-pace ghost story from a fiercely ambitious author known for publishing gargantuan novels.)įor Mitchell completists, part of the appeal of Slade House will be making connections to his other novels when familiar words or characters show up. Each chapter follows roughly the same structure as well, with Mitchell subtly altering the sequence of events for heightened horror. October is the perfect time for Slade House, since it marries Mitchell’s penchant for time-hopping tales with a creepy setting whose origins become clearer with each successive visitor. But to newcomers, it’s a bite-sized collection of haunted-house stories that function as a beginner’s guide to Mitchell’s sprawling world. For Mitchell’s established fanbase, it’s a glimpse at previously excised backstory for recurring characters. Instead of a daunting brick that taunts anyone unfamiliar with his work, the comparatively diminutive novel-out this week-clocks in at a comparatively diminutive 256 pages. The intimidating amount of thought it takes to keep track of it all makes Mitchell a revered figure among his fans, but it can also scare off casual readers who aren’t sure whether-or how-to invest in such a densely woven network of stories.Īnd that tension is exactly why his latest book, Slade House, is such a revelation. The web is so tangled that when he published The Bone Clocks last year, Vulture made a chart to keep track of them all. Instead, he's fashioned a universe: All of his novels are interconnected, with characters popping up again in books set years later or being revealed as fictional characters within the world of another story.

His best-known book, Cloud Atlas, follows an accordion structure of six nested stories, from nineteenth-century New Zealand to post-apocalyptic Hawaii it's a structure so unconventional that only the Wachowskis and Tom Twyker believed a film adaptation to be possible.īut Mitchell isn’t simply interested in creating vast worlds one book at a time. His books are sprawling, labyrinthine tomes that encompass centuries of time, far-flung settings, and multiple narrators grappling with historical meaning and existential themes. To call British novelist David Mitchell’s work ambitious is to undersell its scope dramatically.

Slade house book