House of Leaves : A novel

Rating:
Summary: A wholly remarkable book, but not for everyone
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: An experimental blast
Review: This postmodern, typographically chaotic novel is a monstrous book, both in page numbers and ambition. It is the literary equivalent of "The Ring." As we learn in the introduction, Johnny Truant, a tattoo parlor employee, has come into possession of a trunk full of bizarre scraps of paper once owned by an old blind man, Zampano, now dead. The papers comprise an exploration of a cult film called "The Navidson Record" and its sub-films, documentaries about an ever-expanding house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and which consumes the lives of anyone who enters its dark hallways or watches the tapes. Johnny becomes himself obsessed with Zampano's papers and, in turn, with the Navidson house. He is haunted by the beast he smells and the descending madness he had no inclination to stop. The book itself is the melding of Zampano's papers, Johnny's footnote digressions into his own life and its troubles, and the debate among academics as they struggle to make sense of a film that probably never existed. The result is a dark, wild, often hilarious, sometimes excruciatingly boring foray into the meaning of home, family, love, and self.

The structure of the novel is innovative, with Johnny Truant's story unfolding in footnotes and in the appendices, while Zampano describes the film and the academics bicker over its meaning in the body. The most riveting narrative thread in this novel is of Navidson's and others' descents into the smooth walled, dark cavern of the mysterious hallway. The consequences on Navidson's marriage and on those he loves are devastating, and the reader is swept into both the horror and the need for hope. Johnny's story is less compelling, especially as the house fades into the background and his story takes over. The academic over-analysis is tons of fun - as long as you have the patience to get over the dryness to find the kernel it has been working toward. For example, early in the book, Danielewski (in the writings of Zampano) provides a lengthy academic discussion of the myth of Echo and its scientific and literary significance, only to derail it with a Johnny Truant footnote telling the reader that "Frankly I'd of rec'd a quick skip past the whole echo ramble were it not for those six lines . . ."

Even more bizarre than the telling of Truant's tale in footnotes is the typographical methods used to visually evoke the house in the Navidson Record. The words become their own labyrinth, with "hallways" of text enclosed in blue boxes; they sometimes inhabit corners only, or skip up and down the pages, one or two words at a time. When the characters don't know which way is up, the reader is twisting and turning the physical book to read upside down and sideways. You have to see the book to fully appreciate the visual hijinks Danielewski uses. It can take a long time to read certain sections, only to find that you can flip through several pages with just a glance at each.

Despite the suspenseful plot, HOUSE OF LEAVES is anything but a quick read. Its satisfaction is derived more from its individual parts than as a whole since it ends, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, not with a bang but a whimper. I recommend this for patient readers and for those who delight in experimental turns in fiction.

Rating:
Summary: New take on haunted houses.
Review: This book is an amazing feat. It does take a lot of work to read but the outcome is rewarding. Rooms that grow, doorways that lead to places that shouldn't exist, and a house that knows of its own existence are parts of this story. It grows from the ordinary horror story in that it is told from the perspective of one transcribing notes of a man who saw the video based on the home owner's experiences. If that thought makes you dizzy, you might be experiencing some of the magic that this book can give. The book contains at least three different storylines that are each amazing by their own right. My recommendation: if you don't have the time to get involved in the book, or are looking for a quick and light read, avoid this one until you can afford the time it will take. But if you are up for the challenge, by all means, jump for it. You will not regret the effort.

Rating:
Summary: For Sale By Owner
Review: I first heard of "House of Leaves" about a year ago on the Internet. Somebody said it was the best new horror novel they had read in years. Then when I started working at a bookstore in town, one of my new friends there told me it was the scariest book he had ever read.

All of this quite intrigued me. So I bought the book and read it over a period of about six months. It's not a quick read, or at least it wasn't for me. I had to have other, more normal, sane books going on at the same time. "House of Leaves" is over seven hundred pages long and it's loaded with literary detour signs, unespected landmines (some duds, some live), and good old "holding the book upside down in a mirror so you can read the words printed that way" fun.

"House of Leaves" is a contortionist's daydream, and a conservative reader's nightmare. I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and found myself admiring the new unhallowed ground Danielewski was breaking, but at other times longing for a more conventional, satisfying structure.

This whole thing is very postmodern. The house is aware of itself as a house, and the book is aware of itself as a book. There is a story of a family moving into a house, trying to sort out its interpersonal demons, and finding that the insides of things (lives, minds, houses) can often be darker, scarier, stranger, and more convoluted than they would appear from the outsides.

That alone would have made a great book, told with inventive language and a compelling psychological subtext.

But that's just the beginning, the backstory really. "House of Leaves" is a story inside a story inside a story, etc. In fact, it puts the dizzying structure of Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein" to shame.

In "House of Leaves," there's a young guy named Johnny Truant who's acting as literary editor, presenting the compelling and disturbing scribblings and ramblings on an old man named Zampano. Zampano's papers, which are presented posthumously, recount, at times blow-for-blow, a documentary film called "The Navidson Record" of a family moving into a house which proves to be larger on the inside than it is on the outside.

There is also another editor above Johnny, who makes comments on top of Johnny's comments. Johnny finds himself wondering if the old man didn't just make up the whole story about the young family moving into the house, because Johnny is unable to find any corroborating scrap of proof that the film exists.

Of course, add into the mix that Johnny is a self-admitted fibber and story teller extroidinaire. He tells us how much fun he has making up completely bogus stories for the benefit of strangers her meets in bars.

Knowing this, the reader has to start to wonder if the old man, Zampano, even exists, or if he's just an invention of Johnny's. And if you follow that line of thinking too far, you might even start to wonder if the heavy black book you're holding exists.

This is the haunted house that's in the film that the old man made up and wrote about as if it were as real as he was, but who was really just a figment of the narrator's fertile imagination, the narrator that doesn't really exist, except on paper and in the reader's mind and imagination...so maybe none of it exists...or all of it does. Maybe the house has turned on its porch lights somewhere deep, deep inside of you, down all those twisting tunnels and swirling, dark echoing caves.

Maybe there's a sign out front. "For Sale By Owner." And under that, in small print, in French, upside down and backwards, "Buyer Beware."

Rating:
Summary: An experimental blast
Review: This postmodern, typographically chaotic novel is a monstrous book, both in page numbers and ambition. It is the literary equivalent of "The Ring." As we learn in the introduction, Johnny Truant, a tattoo parlor employee, has come into possession of a trunk full of bizarre scraps of paper once owned by an old blind man, Zampano, now dead. The papers comprise an exploration of a cult film called "The Navidson Record" and its sub-films, documentaries about an ever-expanding house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and which consumes the lives of anyone who enters its dark hallways or watches the tapes. Johnny becomes himself obsessed with Zampano's papers and, in turn, with the Navidson house. He is haunted by the beast he smells and the descending madness he had no inclination to stop. The book itself is the melding of Zampano's papers, Johnny's footnote digressions into his own life and its troubles, and the debate among academics as they struggle to make sense of a film that probably never existed. The result is a dark, wild, often hilarious, sometimes excruciatingly boring foray into the meaning of home, family, love, and self.

The structure of the novel is innovative, with Johnny Truant's story unfolding in footnotes and in the appendices, while Zampano describes the film and the academics bicker over its meaning in the body. The most riveting narrative thread in this novel is of Navidson's and others' descents into the smooth walled, dark cavern of the mysterious hallway. The consequences on Navidson's marriage and on those he loves are devastating, and the reader is swept into both the horror and the need for hope. Johnny's story is less compelling, especially as the house fades into the background and his story takes over. The academic over-analysis is tons of fun - as long as you have the patience to get over the dryness to find the kernel it has been working toward. For example, early in the book, Danielewski (in the writings of Zampano) provides a lengthy academic discussion of the myth of Echo and its scientific and literary significance, only to derail it with a Johnny Truant footnote telling the reader that "Frankly I'd of rec'd a quick skip past the whole echo ramble were it not for those six lines . . ."

Even more bizarre than the telling of Truant's tale in footnotes is the typographical methods used to visually evoke the house in the Navidson Record. The words become their own labyrinth, with "hallways" of text enclosed in blue boxes; they sometimes inhabit corners only, or skip up and down the pages, one or two words at a time. When the characters don't know which way is up, the reader is twisting and turning the physical book to read upside down and sideways. You have to see the book to fully appreciate the visual hijinks Danielewski uses. It can take a long time to read certain sections, only to find that you can flip through several pages with just a glance at each.

Despite the suspenseful plot, HOUSE OF LEAVES is anything but a quick read. Its satisfaction is derived more from its individual parts than as a whole since it ends, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, not with a bang but a whimper. I recommend this for patient readers and for those who delight in experimental turns in fiction.

Rating:
Summary: One of those few books that changes the way you think...
Review: Just flipping through the pages of House Of Leaves, one can see that it's anything but an ordinary read. Paragraphs written sideways, "missing" bits of text, and pages with one or two words on them, all help to develop the book's incredible sense of foreboding and unease. There are also a ton of footnotes included (many simply for interests sake), and going through them all makes for a considerably labyrinthine reading experience. In fact, there's a whole chapter devoted to labyrinths. Go figure.
While some tote this book as a thriller, I disagree. Granted, there are a few places where there is a feeling of suspense in the air, but most of the book is just really, really interesting reading. There are philosophical quotes, stories of life on the streets, examinations in psychology, and pretty much everything else included within the confines of it's pages.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing things about the book however, is it's deep dissection of it's own components (a novel that studies itself). The Truant and editorial comments, as well as the professional quotes all come together to create something of an examination of the book, within the book (it is written as a documentary after all), which leaves us with both more, and less to think about once we're through. On one hand, this professional dissection of the novel answers many of the questions for us, giving us little to wonder about. Adversely, we can take our own perspective on these examinations and develop a personal view of the events in the book. Despite all the theories, and interviews included, however, there is still a great deal of material left to our imaginations.
Overall, House Of Leaves may just be the best book I've ever read, and I recommend it to anyone who likes to form their own opinions about what they read. I will warn you, however, that the ending is somewhat inconclusive, and there are many unanswered questions. Depending on you're approach to the book, this may or may not be a good thing.

Rating:
Summary: Postmodern in matter and design
Review: Danielewski's novel deals, in general, with the illusory nature of reality. His method of unfolding two (three?) stories through the use of creative footnoting makes the reader forget that it is, in fact, a novel, and not some non-fiction written by successive lunatics. The titular house is lovecraftian in its proportions and the horror of the book comes from the questions it raises (again like Lovecraft, through successively less subtle hints) about the our perceptions of reality.
This unreality is compounded by the fact that Poe's album "Haunted" references the novel as if it where real, leading the reader to half-doubt the appelation of novel as he or she becomes entangled in the fiction (now questionable in some remote corner of the reader's otherwise rational mind).
Even I was slightly discomforted when I found myself reading the last parts of the novel in a Holiday Inn in Williamsburg, exactly the place Truant finds himself near the end of the novel.
I would reccomend this novel to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: A Solid Book That is Over Blown
Review: At many points in the book, HOUSE OF LEAVES is a page turner in the extreme, with actual book turning in a counter clockwise fashion. Text is omitted, footnoted into absurdity, set into designs (which work to surprising effect), etc.

Without giving too much away, THE HOUSE OF LEAVES is about a man that finds and edits a manuscript by a dead blind man. The manuscript is an analysis of a fictious movie about a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside. Interested? You'd be surprised how facinating that premise becomes. This is really two novels, that of the editor, and that of the family the movie is about. When I say two novels, I mean that literally, too. Not two stories, but two distinct novels juxaposed together.

Much of the beginning of the book is boring. Many passages read like a textbook, which follows the schtick. It is in the middle and end of the book that Danielewski finds his voice. Once the plot takes off, you want to finish it, and many of the weirder elements of the book add to the aura of confusion.

Rating:
Summary: Potential, but stumbles and never recovers
Review: The writing itself is beautiful and Danielewski certainly has a great measure of talent. However, underneath the footnotes, pages containing only one phrase, secret codes, etc. is an old story that is not being told in a new way, it is just being shuffled, reorganized, and splattered across the pages. This book could have been excellent-had Danielewski actually written something original. Consequently, it comes across as pretentious, and the characters and the novel itself ultimately are like the hallway and the house- devoid of anything, really. Read it if you have too much time on your hands, too little imagination, and love cheap 'psychological' chills.

Rating:
Summary: the point is there is no point
Review: The novel is a tale of a family moving into a new home and discovering the inside of the house to be a 1/4 of an inch larger than the outside. After the family comes back from vacation, they notice a hallway had appeared that wasn't there before. The father, along with his brother and some friends, decide to go exploring. Upon entering the hallway, they find it's a labyrinth with each room opening up into another. It's dark and there's some animal-like growling. There's a spiral staircase that takes them days to reach the bottom of. They get lost. The dimensions of the spaces change. Rooms get bigger/smaller. People freak out. It's dark.

With all the footnotes, experiments in the layout of print (paragraphs written upside down, in mirror image, right side up, etc), vague philosophic spew on what the "darkness" could mean, what fear feels like and how humanity approaches and deals with the unknown, the book manages to keep on for seven hundred pages.

Tell me more on how everyone fears something they don't understand, how there's aspects of ourselves we never know about, how there's some things reason can't account for or how even trying to explain it all is beyond the capabilities of language. Because that's something the Gothic novels of the 1800's missed.

But make sure you shroud it all in pedantic drivel, made-up footnotes, allusions to Greek literature and verbal gymnastics. Because your readers have nothing better to do than stand in awe of your intelligence and decipher all the "complex" themes, allusions and metaphors that shroud your lack of meaning.

Pretenscious, pointlessly experimental, verbose and ambivalent.

If you like reading graduate school essays on post-modernism, you'll love this book.