The Right Sort

by David Mitchell

The story is being narrated in the present tense by a boy tripping on his mother's Valium pills. He likes Valium because it reduces the bruising hurly-burly of the world into orderly, bite-sized 'pulses'. So the boy is essentially thinking and experiencing in Tweets," said Mitchell. "My hope is then that the rationale for deploying Twitter comes from inside the story, rather than it being imposed by me, from outside, as a gimmick. Usefully, the Valium also lets me walk that 'Turn of the Screw' tightrope between the fabulous and realism: maybe the supernatural events are really happening, or maybe they're just chemical phantasms.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy

ebook

First published July 18, 2014

About the author

David Mitchell was born in Southport, Merseyside, in England, raised in Malvern, Worcestershire, and educated at the University of Kent, studying for a degree in English and American Literature followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature. He lived for a year in Sicily, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England. After another stint in Japan, he currently lives in Ireland with his wife Keiko and their two children. In an essay for Random House, Mitchell wrote: "I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moose Jaw, on an oil rig or in the circus? This is my answer to myself." Mitchell's first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), moves around the globe, from Okinawa to Mongolia to pre-Millennial New York City, as nine narrators tell stories that interlock and intersect. The novel won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (for best work of British literature written by an author under 35) and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His two subsequent novels, number9dream (2001) and Cloud Atlas (2004), were both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In 2003, he was selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. In 2007, Mitchell was listed among Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World. Mitchell's American editor at Random House is novelist David Ebershoff.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Twitter story that was (is being) developed into a novel, Slade House, which I've reviewed here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

Twitter version, but in leaner format: http://www.themillions.com/2014/07/ex....

All my Mitchell reviews are on an uber shelf:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 3 out of 5]

These Tweets are Writ Petite (Making the Most of Your 140 Twitter Characters)

Run! Now is not the time to explain the Right Sort or the Shaded Way to an ill-bred child like Nathan Bland. Time was. Time is. Time is not.

[Genevieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little too convenient that Nathan, the young character in "The Right Sort," pops a Valium, which “breaks down the world into bite-sized sentences." (A nice way for David Mitchell to get around the conceit of the 140-characters-at-a-time Twitter format.) But Nathan's drugged up state also becomes an integral part of the story as the events twist and spiral into something more sinister.

As the crazy hallucinations start happening, at first you think, oh, it's just the Valium, big whoop, kinda gimmicky. But at some point, the line between a bad trip and real horror is crossed and there's no going back. The story picks up momentum and suspense, in the way that only Mitchell can deliver. "The Right Sort" is imaginatively brisk.

It's become a given that all of Mitchell's works are connected in some way. Lady Briggs and her creepy spawn, Jonah, evoke the predatory baddies in The Bone Clocks. "The Right Sort" also has that authentic teen-boy voice and perspective that endeared Black Swan Green to so many readers. When this first came out, I thought it would be a throw-away story; Mitchell himself admitted he had been encouraged to do it by his publishers to promote TBC and to get himself warmed up to social media, which has never been his thing. To his credit, Mitchell is able to inhabit Nathan's mind from moment to moment, beat to beat, with an immediacy that reflects the medium. With each clipped line, it's like we're right there in Nathan's fever-dream. Ultimately I think Mitchell's stumbled on something interesting here, especially as a bridge (however unintended) between The Bone Clocks and his upcoming Slade House.

Read "The Right Sort" on The Millions or on Twitter.

[ash | songsforafuturepoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this before I embark on number9dream. I love that he wrote a whole short story on Twitter, weaving the character limit into a story plot, very clever. I am also pleasantly surprised that this was a prelude to Slade House.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am not a huge fan of short stories, so my opinion is already biased from the start. And well, it's not really a book, is it? The 'gimmick' that it was serialized on Twitter was - to me at least- nothing more than a gimmick (Sorry David). The story gives us a (very) small flavour of The Bone Clocks but although well-written - you don't expect less from David Mitchell - is not much more than that - we've come to expect more from David Mitchell.

[Nicole]

Man, goodreads catalogs everything.

well, everything in English, anyway.

[Chance Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Mitchell wrote a short story on Twitter. I read it. It has been altered to become the first chapter of Slade House. That is better, because you don't have to scroll through tweets.

[Andrea (mrsaubergine) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great writing, even limited by the medium of Twitter. I'm intrigued enough to want to seek out Slade House and all Mitchell's other work.

[Thomas Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get the idea, I get the plot. But it's no more than a gimmick really, is it? Fine, there's probably a deeper reading of this. But I can't get past the Twitter gimmick...

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Form over content

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typically Mitchell, but a bit too short to really fascinate.

[Chuck Knudsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a nice creepy little short story. I look forward to the book!

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable experiment. I only read it as I intend to complete my reading of everything listed here by Mitchell in the next few weeks. Really for completists only.