House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
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Book Reviews of House of Leaves
Book Review: Concrete Literature has arrived at last....
Summary: 5 Stars
It's easy to compare House of Leaves to the Blair Witch Project. It does little to quash the initial impression of it being a literary equivalent. But proceed further and you understand that what you have here is something far better than Blair Witch and with a much greater talent in control here. House of Leaves is, to sum up, about a house bigger on the inside than the outside. A house with a labyrinth that extends into forever and provides no solid explanation of why and where it exists. The book is an analysis of a documentary that seemingly never existed. The book, to use a cliche, truly defies a description of clarity. I tried explaining it several times and each time just ended up muttering and walking away.
As the book progresses, the writing grows to reflect the story itself. Footnotes on par with 'Infinite Jest' begin to grow larger and larger, and then start running up the sides of each page and appearing backwards in a blue box in the center of the page. This book is one of the real solid examples of concrete literature, where the story is written to resemble the shape of its subject. After 100 pages or so, your eyes will hurt, you will be confused and unsure of whether or not to read the main story or the footnotes or the footnoted stories.
And House of Leaves is genuinely disturbing and frightening, on a much grander and more inventive manner than Blair Witch could have ever hoped for.
This ain't for everyone. It's on the verge of being experimental, enough so that most mainstream readers who patronize Steven King's bi-monthly releases will probably not enjoy this, but it is still effective storytelling. And exhausting. If anything, you'll come away with an extreme appreciation of Danielewski's endurance and rigorousness in his footnotes (even the fake ones read like real) and the audaciousness of having only one letter occupy an entire page.
House of Leaves is not without drawbacks. Some of the techniques used can be highly frustrating. There is a whole chapter where bits and pieces have been burned, and Danielewski uses [] to signify where something was burned away, but to anyone reading, the gaps are obvious and using [] rather than filling in one letter is an exercise in tediousness. A lot of the footnotes are useless and long-winded.
But for anyone who enjoys being challenged by literature...who looks for something new, even if it's a magnificent failure (not to say House of Leaves is a failure, but it does tend to drift)...for anyone who wants to feed their brain something it'll take awhile to chew on, get this. If Danielewski keeps this up (and one wonders how, if, he will ever write another book after this) he'll surely join that divine pantheon of Murakami, Carroll and Lethem, all of them shining with the inner light of pure transcendent beauty.
Book Review: Self-referential post-modern Lovecraftian horror--not for everyone, but incredible and bold. Highly recommended
Summary: 5 Stars
In the apartment of a dead man, Johnny Truant discovers a manuscript by Zampanò, an academic study of a documentary called The Navidson Record in which journalist Navidson finds an impossible endless hallway within his house. Interweaving the events of the documentary with Zampanò and Truant's interjections, with copious footnotes, an unusual layout, and lengthy appendixes, House of Leaves is self-referential post-modern Lovecraftian horror which is as intriguing as it is pretentious. This novel must be read to believed, and it's a long journey not without faults, but I recommend it enthusiastically.
There are three stories here: Truant's life and past, the lingering hints of Zampanò's life, and Navidson's long journey into the endless bowels of his house. If that weren't enough, the text lies in columns and narrow blocks that mimic the house's hallways, words and passages appear in odd colors, and the footnotes have footnotes and reference books which don't exist. In short, House of Leaves has a lot going on, and it is an odd and a bold book from the first page. Reading it can be a labor--but it is a labor of love, because it offers so much.
In the vein of Lovecraft, House of Leaves is not the horror of ghosts or scary images, but rather the horror of the endless and terrifying unknown. Via some wonderful storytelling and the unusual layout Truant and the reader are dragged along through Navidson's explorations, and are frightened and threatened in turn. Books never scare me, but this one did--and for that alone I would recommend it. But House of Leaves offers more than just terror. The journey into the house is also a journey into the self, and it pushes explorers to their limits. As such, the book has a surprisingly strong human element--one which is a bit too present at the end, where the horror is exchanged for a resolution between Navidson and his wife. This was my least favorite part, and makes for a slow conclusion. Still, on the whole, the book is a careful combination of atmospheric Lovecraftian horror and delicate human exploration, and it succeeds at both.
Be willing to wade through footnotes, to flip to the appendix, to turn the book upside down and on edge; enjoy and find humor in the self-aware pretentious post-modernism; be fascinated the horror of the endless, incomprehensible unknown--and you will love this book. I did, nearly every word of it, and so I cannot recommend it highly enough. It may not be the book for everyone and it is not without fault, but it is undeniably brave and I only wish we saw more books like it. The endless dark inspires wonder and awe and fear, and when we look into it we will never escape the memory of what we see. At least, I hope not. I hope (and expect) that this book will stay with me forever.
Book Review: Modern Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
House of Leaves is a seemingly chaotic mass of intricate plotlines, highly developed characters, and extensive research. This genre-busting book defies explanation. It takes elements of a blockbuster horror movie, a thriller novel, and a tale of romance and blends them seamlessly with the existential journey of multiple characters on multiple levels.
The book follows multiple plotlines. The main character, Johnny Truant, ventures to a neighboring apartment with his friend Lude. The apartment used to belong to an old blind (presumably French) man who had recently died. While examining the place, Johnny discovers a jumbled stack of papers written by the old man. Its title, "House of Leaves".
The main portion of this book is the events that go on in the House of Leaves. The House of Leaves is the analysis of a fictional movie entitled The Nividson Record. It tells the story of the retiring photojournalist Will Nividson and his family as they move into their new house on Ash Tree Lane. One day, Nividson notices that one of the walls in his house seems longer than usual. When he goes to measure it, he finds that it is in fact larger that it was before. However, when he measures the outside of the house, he finds that it is the same length as normal. The inside of his house is larger than the outside.
Eventually, one night, a new closet appears in the house. When Will opens it, he discovers that it leads off into a dark labyrinth. The Nividson Record chronicles his exploration of this new space.
The book is written from the perspective of the old man and his analysis of the Nividson Record. However, the character Johnny Truant's personal story is also included as various footnotes throughout the novel. Almost every page in the book has some sort of reference or footnote attached to it. Some of the sources are real, others not, but they all play an important role in explaining the novel. There are also many syntactical manipulations to the text. The words in the story often mimic the action that is happening. If the character is confused, the words are scattered for instance. It is quite frequent to find pages with only one or two words on them or others that contain only a list of names. While all of this at first seems meaningless, it is soon discovered that everything in the book has a purpose (such as coded messages in the footnotes).
House of Leaves is an exciting and somewhat challenging read due to its complex structure yet once you get into it, it all makes sense. It is a visionary exploration into the narratory view and is a must read for anyone who loves a wonderful, developed story with many mysteries to discover.
Book Review: Cult phenomenon or the Next Overhyped Horror Movie?
Summary: 5 Stars
Yeeeeeesh. . . .watch out if "House" catches on . . . you'll never hear the end of it . . .See, if the people that scripted The Blair Witch Project had an ounce of cerebral fortitude and imagination, they would have made it like this sprawling work of art and not the annoying Real World arguefest that it was.
No doubt studios indie and major will be beating down Pantheon's door quickly, as this "film" about a house that's a quaint colonial on the outside, but defies physical and spatial logic on the inside, slowly expanding to a blackened, directionless maze that would make the Winchester Mansion seem like the Unabomber's shack in comparison, BEGS for the Industrial Light and Magic treatment (which, by the way, gets a mention in the footnotes) that usually translates into big box-office numbers. Tell you what, I'd watch it. A movie with this much originality going for it would probably give the horror genre the kick that it desperately needs.
The novel's maniacal complexity, horizontal, vertical and flat-out book-shifting footnotes (where the print turns upside-down, referential and mirrored to personify the labyrinthene complexity of the home's . . well . . expansive interior) and poetry-scrapbook layout assures it of never making Oprahs Mainstream Book Club anytime soon (thank GOD). Johnny Truant's acidic narrative of the old blind man's story serves it's purpose as a witty readers guide to the Navidson Record, a grandiose account of building structure, photography, death and the darkness of the human condition.
Inevitable Pynchon and Foster Wallace comparisons will sprout up due to the book's length and cavernous depth, but with all of it's mountainous textuals and encyclopedic assault, I surprisingly found House of Leaves to be quite a smooth and easy read (I read it in two days). Unlike Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest, which pound you into submission from Chapter One (that's not to say it's a BAD thing), House actually places emphasis on plot and narrative over the prosaic self-indulgence typical of experimental post-modern fiction. The story itself is very reminiscent of "The Tunnel" by William Gass, only this time the house does the "digging" and not the author.
I kind of disagree with Easton-Ellis's back-cover comment about the book "rendering most fiction worthless", since I've been reading books like this for years. But a big hats off to Danielewsi, who sets a new post-modern standard for new authors (and their word-processing programs), and for revitalizing a stagnant genre once and for all.
Book Review: A wholly remarkable book, but not for everyone
Summary: 5 Stars
The other reviews listed here give a pretty good impression of what the book is: its layered plots, its broad scope, its unconventional conventions. And people love it or hate it. A surefire sign of great art is that it arouses passion, and whether that passion is in support of the work or in its derision is immaterial. That's my opinion, but be warned: House of Leaves certainly isn't for everyone.There are a lot of people, traditionalists, die-hard Hawthorne and Melville fans, who will dismiss this novel as a pile of post-modernist putrescence. That's fine -- its very creative and pretty out-there, both in its concept and its approach. Those who do dare to pick it up, be sure to have about a week set aside to be consumed by this thing.
It's a dense book. Very dense. I have read it several times, very closely, and I know that I've only seen a third of what's there. Everything has something to do with something else -- there are no insignificant details, no fluff, in this book. And the overall effect of the plethora of STUFF here is remarkable.
You may not be sure of everything that's in there, but you intuit it. You start to get the feeling that Johnny Truant warns you about in the very beginning. As you give yourself over to the book, as you get absorbed into its world, Truant's paranoia creeps off the page and into the reader. It's scary because of the layers, and each voice's belief that the story it tells about is fiction; The Navidson house seems an awful dream, Zampanó approaches the film as fiction, Johnny doesn't know what to think -- he's just engrossed in this bizarre world, trying to put it all together and make sense of it, and "The Editors" raise questions as to whether Mr. Truant is even a real person. The reader, meanwhile, takes on much the same job as Johnny, trying to piece it all together, to find some hidden detail that will unlock these stories, tell us whether they really are fictional. As a reader, you start to doubt. The world gets that shimmer. And at the very end, you realize what's been going on. It's scary while it's happening, but ultimately it's pretty darn funny, as well; the real world is just another layer to this book.
The book asks more of the reader than any ordinary novel; you have to work with it, jump backwards and forwards to reacquaint yourself with some clue, read with a suspicious eye, sometimes set it aside and think on it. In the end, though, it's a gripping experience that's very repeatable and worthwhile. Like everything in the novel, there's something there -- it's just tough to put your finger on it.