House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
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Book Reviews of House of Leaves
Book Review: ?What the....?
Summary: 5 Stars
I am still asking myself what the heck this book is about. In the almost two months since actually reading it, whenever I happen to glance at it on my bookshelf I feel this urge to pick it up, open it, and flip through it.Just to see if anything has changed.
I don't usually critique something from a personal standpoint, but House of Leaves is, well, a personal story. Everyone I have spoken with about it, felt that it touched something deep within them, and yet they cannot quite figure out what that is.
How to describe House of Leaves? I don't even know the genre. It's a mix of horror and mystery, and some sort of strange hybrid of accadamia. House of Leaves is narrated by a guy named Johnny Truant, living in LA, working in a tattoo parlor, just doing his thing, like the rest of us. He finds a book, (I won't go into all the details of how he finds it), called the Navidson Record, which is an academic critisism of a film of the same name. The film, a documantary shot on film and video in black and white, is the chronicle of Will Navidson and his family's move to a North Carolina house. Navidson, a Pulitzer prize winning photo-journalist decides to document the move by setting up cameras all over the house.
At first everything seems fine, but....hey, where did that door come from? Yes, one morning, Will discoveres a door where there was no door the day before. It should lead outside, but it does not. Instead it leads into a labrynth, a maze of endless corridors and spiral staircases, and one really scary howl.
Not too mention, the house is about an eight of an inch longer inside than it is outside.
Now, if this novel was written by Stephen King or any of his ilk, it may have been a good old fashioned scare-fest. It would have kept you up at night and got you to turning the pages faster and faster. But....House of Leaves is not Stephen King. Or should I say it is, run through a shreader and then taped back together, just a bit out of order. Much of the novel is straitforward, and much is itself a maze of words that run backwards or upside down on the page. Some pages have only one or two lines which run diaganol or in a spiral. Then there are footnotes, some are interesting, adding new pieces of information to the already complex story. Others, are unnecessary to actually read, but add flavor to the novel. In addition, this is a book within a book. We read the Navidson Record, just as Johnny does, but also see and hear and read is reactions to it. Through his own footnotes we get a glimpse into his story, his life. (Wait til you get to the Pekinese, it'll absolutely devestate you).
All this might sound as if it is mearly for effect. It is. And it works. Somehow, it got to me. And on an extremely personal level. The novel haunted me. Even the boring parts, and there are plenty of those, got to me. There is a method in Mark Z. Danielewski's style which you don't quite understand until the book is over.
So what is this book about? Really? I don't know. I may have to read it again. I think it is about change, the mercurial quality of life. The fact that sometimes things happen and you cannot understand why or how or what will happen.
One night, I called a friend and we discussed the book. We started noticing things. I would say, "Look on page 321, now look at 253, look at how that's written here and here." And we'd figure something else out. It was as if the author had presented us the case, and now we were finding our own clues that had been hidden, strewn, throughout the novel.
One last note. My copy of House of Leaves has started falling apart. It has changed much like the house that the Navidson's moved into changed. I told my friend. He said that his book was falling apart in the same way. And his friend's book too. And so on. Creepy ain't it?
Book Review: The most insanely, different book I've ever read.
Summary: 5 Stars
I've just finished reading a novel that, for me, redefines HOW a book
can be written. It is called "House of Leaves" by Mark Z.
Danielewski. It is nearly impossible to describe WHAT it is about,
and even more difficult to explain HOW it is presented. If anyone is
in the mood for something totally different, this could be your
ticket. However, at 700+ pages (and many of them infuriatingly
detailed) it is not an "easy" read. This is a love/hate book the
likes of which I have never seen.
A synopsis is nearly impossible. Most reviews I have read relate as
much. As best I can descibe it, "House of Leaves" begins with a story
written by a fictional character named Zampano. Early on, Zampano (an
80 year old, blind, house-bound nutcase) dies under mysterious
circumstances. Throughout the latter part of his life, Zampano was
obsessed with writing a fictional story called "The Navidson Record."
This story is written in almost essay form, about the fictional
accounts of a family that moves into a rural home in the Virginia
countryside where very strange things occur. The head of the family,
Will Navidson (a professional photojournalist,) recorded every
indescribable/impossible event that transpired in their house. As
Zampano's story goes, the recorded events were turned into an
international hit docu-drama movie (think Blair Witch Project).
Zampano creates an entire universe of people who have supposedly seen
this movie, and have written articles, books, thesis and subsequent
films about that film. There are hundreds of footnotes, endnotes and
quotes attributed to both real and fictional people who supposedly
have seen this movie.
Along comes another character named Johnny Truant. Truant discovers
Zampano's unfinished, and painfully disorganized manuscript, and
feels compelled to translate, organize and explain what he has found.
Johnny Truant is by far, the single most perfect observance into
total insanity I have ever seen. The more obsessed he becomes with
attempting to understand Zampano's story, the further into the abyss
we watch Truant fall.
The book often presents Zampano's academic essay and Truant's run-on
ramblings on the same page, for pages at a time, in simultaneous
narrative, that shapes the text to conform to the mindset of
whichever author rules the page. (Some pages have only one paragraph,
sentence or word. Some pages have four or five running footnotes that
continue for 10 or more pages - backwards, forwards, or even
requiring a mirror to read.) Some sentences run on for two, three or
more pages.
The central focus of the story is anyone's guess. However, the theme
tends to relate back to the definition of TRUE darkness and
emptiness, and I mean total and complete. There are diagrams, poems,
letters from mothers in insane asylums, and supposed quotes from
people such as Steven King, Camille Paglia, Ken Burns and countless,
countless others.
If you ever see the book on your travels, take a couple of minutes to
flip through the pages. IMHO, it is the work of pure genius. I am
dumbfounded that ONE person could write this. There are DETAILED
references to biblical scripture, ancient Greek mythology, scientific
studies of sound and echo, and an almost thorough knowledge of all
things knowable.
As I feared, describing WHAT this book is has made me sound as insane
as the characters in it. I will stop now. Investigate further at your
own peril. But beware: this could one day be you! :-)
Book Review: House of ideas
Summary: 5 Stars
Amongst the most distinctive shifts in culture the Western world has encountered over the last two decades, you would have to include the embrace of postmodern theory and the current discourse of the Digerati. In his terrifying 2000 opus, House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski embraced both.
House of Leaves, a 710-page conundrum and ostensible horror story, is many things in one. It is an Internet home page on steroids, growing into a carefully crafted digital sculpture, and then leaping off-screen in the leaves of a book. Leaves which build a most unusual house.
It is a digital experimentation in type blended with a Derridean embrace of the interactivity of text. It is a publishing experiment become artwork, each page a derivation from the usual formality of fiction; part John Cage, Edgar Allen Poe, Jacques Derrida and William S. Burroughs in cut-up mode. Bret Easton Ellis stated that "One can imagine Thomas Pynchon, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King and David Foster Wallace bowing at Danielewski's feet choking with astonishment, surprise, laughter, awe." But comparisons aside, House of Leaves is a unique item that should appeal to typographers and theorists alongside high school kids and lovers of a good yarn. Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, captured the spirit of the `novel' when he wrote that: "This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore, put down, or persuasively conclude reading. In fact, when you purchase your copy you may reach a certain page and find me there, reduced in size like Vincent Price in The Fly, still trapped in the web of its malicious, beautiful pages."
Several things are occurring at once in this book, circling an ominous staircase at the center of a home that embraces a hidden secondary space. On the surface it is a horror story, but deeper down it is the tale of a failing relationship, and a tale about mortality and love. It is also a crazed experiment in typography, at times pushing the limits of readability, while testing the limits of concrete poetry in the post-Blast age of the Apple computer. Yet again it is an experiment in cinematic visuality, deliberately mimicking the jerk of the camera. And again it is a test of narrative structure, attempting - successfully - to blend three or more different narratives; the journal of a blind man, Zampano, critiquing a fictional film made by the main character, with text loaded to the hilt with detailed footnotes alongside the notes of a bright but disturbed young man, Johnny Truant.
Here Danielewski blends, firstly, the trend in scholarly journals (and the ironic referencing of it in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) to over-footnote every item; secondly the heavy handed polemic of contemporary film criticism and thirdly, the drive of popular fiction.
To take this even further, each element is set in type that refers to its function and narrative relevance; Truant, who brings us this tome, is aptly set in courier. The words of the old man are set in Times and editorial commentary is set in Bookman - book man, get it?
Danielewski also excerpted a part of House of Leaves in a seperate tome, The Whaestoe Letters. The letters excerpt and expand upon a narrative section in House comprising letters sent to Johnny Truant from his mother who is wasting away in an asylum. Touching and poignant, the Letters are an indication of the depths that House features.
The levels of investigation seem endless, the reader adrift in the flotsam of experimentation and the adrenaline of central narrative, being constantly tricked.
Book Review: Experimental Metafiction; Effective Horror
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me say up front that this book didn't freak me out, give me nightmares, or any of the other stuff that people claim. However, by comparison to other horror novels that I've read, House of Leaves is very effective.
Although thrills and chills can be more effectively delivered on film, House of Leaves proves that it can be done on paper too. However, the book doesn't do it through outright gore; in fact, I don't recall a gorey thing about the book (except maybe the very graphic play-by-plays of Johnny Truant's sexual encounters). Instead, the book causes you to question things and sometimes leaves you feeling empty---as empty as the house's black hallways.
The book tells two main storylines. One is Johnny's; Johnny stumbled upon this review written by a man named Zampano after Zampano dies. The review (not a starred, magazine-type thing, mind you) is of a documentary called The Navidson Record, which follows Will and Karen Navidson's move into a new home in Virginia with their two children. That is the other storyline.
Over time, they come to notice that the house's internal dimensions are actually larger than the external ones. After that, Will and Karen discover a hallway in their bedroom that was not there before. Then a closet appears in their living room. This closet is smooth, completely black, unlit, and changes dimensions as it pleases.
That's where things start going awry. Will develops this perverse need to explore it, and things that happen in this story are often mirrored in Johnny's, causing Johnny to go crazy.
The layout of the book relects things that go on in the book as well. In a chapter where Zampano likens the house to a labyrinth as Will and some hired help explore it, the text goes up, down, sideways, and backwards to mirror it. Fewer words will be put on a page to quicken the pace, or they'll be spread out very far. Sometimes it will be condensed into small boxes or at the bottom or top of a page to create a certain feeling, sometimes mirroring a character's feelings.
This book is horror, yes, but it's a love story, too. The house tests Will and Karen's love (and some others), and there's also the love between Johnny and his mother, Pelafina, whose story is told through Johnny and letters in the appendix from Pelafina.
I found the ending of Will and Karen's story a bit sappy, but then again, it's been a while since horror has had a happy ending. My friend, who I lent the book too, enjoyed the ending more than I did, though, so it may vary from person to person.
Johnny's ending isn't that great either, but I think the horror of the book and the pace and plot events of its meaty middle section are what stick with people more. Besides, the book doesn't "really" end for those who want to reanalyze and interpret the book fully.
Seriously, the greatest thing about this book, and what has made it such a cult classic, is that it is very open to interpretation, some of them hinted at explicitly in the book, other subtley, and a lot of open space as well. Johnny tells us upfront that he's a compulsive liar---is this entire book no different? Did he make it up? Is it just a letter? Did asylum-bound Pelafina write it?
To take it all in requires multiple readings, and even then there's still so much more to discover. You flip the last page and think, "wow!"
In any case, the most concise review I can write about this is that it's the best horror novel I've ever read, and it's a book that'll beg you to read and reread it.
Book Review: House of Leaves gave me nightmares
Summary: 5 Stars
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is a story within a story within a story, but far more complex than that. It may give you nightmares, make you cry, totally un-impress you, or scare the you know what out of you. It will change your life.
A quick summary of the novel: The Navidson family moves into a house. The father, a photojournalist, takes video of their move into a new location. The video quickly turns into a documentary about the house's supernatural qualities. Zampano, the blind recluse, finds the documentary and starts to write a book about it. Truant, the junkie, finds Zampano's book and makes his own notes.
So, there you have the story within a story within a story. Along the way, you'll find that the word "House" is always written in blue text (if you get the color version of the book), which is the least of the creativity involving typeset. Some pages are written upside down and backwards, while others may contain a single word, or perhaps no words at all. I can guarantee you've never read a novel quite like this one.
I recommend this novel to everyone. Not everyone will like it. In fact, most people won't get through it. Some will think it's brilliant; some will think it's a waste of paper. Regardless of which, it will change their lives and their way of thinking, at least for a little while.
The thing about House of Leaves is that it's not an extraordinary novel at first glance. It appears to be an attempt at avant-garde style. It's a story inside of a story inside of a story that often doesn't make sense. It's filled with unreliable narrators (the drug addict, the blind recluse, and the madly obsessive photo-journalist), endless footnotes, lengthy descriptions and visual tricks. It appears to be an author trying way too hard to do something new.
But it gets under your skin. It scares you when you least expect it. It takes your world and tilts it just a few degrees off-center, just enough to give you an odd disoriented view of the world around you.
After finishing the novel, I wanted to run and hide. Seriously, though, I was relieved when it was done. This was not an easy read. It took me several months, and I had to take breaks from it.
House of Leaves left me feeling disoriented and disconnected. I'm writing this book review one year after starting the novel. Two weeks ago, I had another nightmare about the House. This is probably the most difficult book review I've ever had to write, but I need to write it. This book changed my life, and though I want to share it with others, my review comes with a warning. Odds are, it will change your life, too, and you might not like it.
People equate this novel with the film, The Blair Witch Project, and I've found that the reactions to the novel are similar to those of the film. Either you think it is totally new and it gives you the creeps, or you think it's the dumbest thing you've experienced in your life. For me, House of Leaves is one of the scariest books I've ever read. I've had two nightmares in the year since I started reading it, and I expect to have more.
I found this novel through a message thread on a forum. The title was "Books that changed your life." I added it to my ever-growing list of books to read someday, and quickly forgot about it. Then a local bookstore was going out of business, and this happened to be sitting on the shelf of discounted novels. It felt like the book found me when I was least expecting it. And that's really, really scary.