Slade House

Mitchell has described his novels as installments in a larger body of work he refers to as an “über-novel,” akin to J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium of Middle-earth (Murray, Mitch R. “Thinking Polyphonically: A Conversation with David Mitchell.” Los Angeles Review of Books, 11 Sep. 2020). Stylistically, this choice represents the possibility of allowing characters to bring their experiences from one novel into the next as emotional baggage, finding their resolutions in interactions with other characters.

Consequently, Slade House is full of allusions and intertextual references that might register to seasoned readers of Mitchell’s work. Although Slade House functions as a standalone novel intended to be accessible to newcomers, another layer of meaning is available with some understanding of the major elements that recur across Mitchell’s über-novel and how Slade House fits into this larger mythology.

Mitchell’s novels characteristically span epic lengths of time, as demonstrated in his most popular works, Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks. This accounts for the fact that some of the characters in the über-novel have the ability to transcend the mortal limits of their body and live life again in new or restored bodies.