Rating: 
Summary: A Stunning Debut
Review: I just received my Bachelor's Degree in English and of everything I studied while in school, this novel, by far, is the most interesting thing I read while in college (although I had to find it myself). I predict that within ten years (perhaps sooner), this novel will be studied in colleges and universities across the nation -- and well it should!Danielewski has written a marvelous debut! What I found to be the most intriguing aspect of the novel was that in the house, that the characters never quite feel safe in -- the rooms are always changing --, there is nothing solid for the characters to cling to (perhaps this is why Navidson's son, Chad, spends most of his time outside the house). This lack of a something solid to hold onto was expertly mirrored in the page layout. For most novels, we can grab an iced tea or hot cocoa (depending on the weather) and settle into an overstuffed chair perhaps with a blanket over our legs and settle into a familiar and comfortable story with the friends we meet in our novel. Danielewski, in constantly shifting the page layout and forcing the reader to work to read the story (flipping pages, turning the book around, the extensive footnotes, etc.), takes away the comfortable "falling into the book" feeling most novels give us. We, as readers, have nothing solid to grasp just like the characters in the novel. This is only Danielewski first novel, so it is exciting to anticipate what he will bless his readers with in the future. Danielewski has made a bold entrance to the literary scene. He hasn't just pushed the envelope with this novel, he has knocked it off the table.
Rating: 
Summary: Much Ado About Nothing
Review: Some of the reviewers below, not all of whom liked this book, have said that Danielewski is a good writer. Playing around with style, however, does not make a good writer. "House of Leaves" is a third-rate horror/thriller bloated with a mass of irrelevant detail, especially when it comes to the pseudo-academic footnotes, which become annoying after the first few pages. Consider this: Navison films a movie of the house he moves into, and this documentary is then widely released. It seems that professors all over the planet have been spending all their time analysing it and writing books about it. Why? What's so special about this film? The notion that so many people should spend so much time and mental energy over an essentially BORING family and their haunted house is ludicrous. Danielewski seems to have anticipated this objection, and hints from the beginning at the fact that the film doesn't really exist, that the notes written by the old man are fakes. Why then should we bother with it? The story only works if we try to forget this, and pretend that the film and the house really exist as part of the story. I can imagine Danielewski winking with post-modern irony, telling us, "Well, isn't that what we do each time we read a story?" Yes, we do, but some of us don't find it that inspiring to have this pointed out to us. The real irony is that we have the flimsiest of stories here. Why is the book so confusing to some people, so convoluted and complex? Well, because the book, like the house, is a labyrinth; you're supposed to get lost in it. And if you don't believe me, consider this: Somewhere in the first 50 to 100 pages, Danielewski mentions a certain Pierre Menard, who rewrote Don Quixote. This has nothing to do with anything, except to draw the reader's attention to Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote a short essay some 50-60 years ago about a fictional person who rewrote Don Quixote word for word. Anyone who hasn't read Borges before can find this short masterpiece in ... "Labyrinths." (Wow, what a coincidence!) Other coincidences: Borges, like the old man, was blind, often compared books and libraries to labyrinths, and if that isn't enough, he can be glimpsed peering out from one of the collages in "House of Leaves." (Some of you may also recognise him as Jorge, the blind librarian in "The Name of the Rose.") Borges made an interesting discovery when he began to write many years ago. He had an idea for a book, but decided, instead of writing it, to write ABOUT it, as if it had already been written by someone else. Borges's essays also had footnotes referring to books which did not exist. Why write hundreds of pages, Borges asked, when one can express the same idea in just a few hundred words? The marvel of Borges is his dazzling economy, his ability to express a labyrinth of ideas in a very small space. If Danielewski had followed Borges's example, and given us his story with the same spare economy, instead of wasting so much paper to scatter words about the page backwards and upside-down, there would not be anything left worth publishing. To sum up, then: A piece of crap.
Rating: 
Summary: Blair Witch Project Meets Andy Warhol and Bentley Little
Review: This was one of the most confusing and yet consuming novels I have ever read. Written almost documentarily, like the Blair Witch Project, it is also abstract, much like an Andy Warhol creation. I understand it took about 10 years to write and I can believe it for once Danielewski got up from the word processor, he probably had to re-read about 10 pages to remind him just where he was in this maze of an epic. The story, for those who don't know it already, involves a old blind man, a tattoo shop employee, and a mad woman who narrate a story within a story about a house whose dimensions on the outside don't quite match the dimensions on the inside. If anyone has read "The House" by Bentley Little, it is reminiscent of that novel with its shifting series of hallways and labyrinths that require adventurers to string lights and use cables like mountain climbers to keep in touch with each other. The family that owns the home will find an unspeakable horror at the end of all of these hallways. The story is actually pieced together from differing accounts by the main characters. At first blush, one could be intimidated by the sheer size of the book (over 700 pages). But then, as one flips through it, one may say, "I can read this over the weekend" because many of the pages have only one word on them. (Some of the pages have words backwards and upside down - but that is all part of the journey). Don't be fooled by the sparcity of words on some of the pages because, more often than not, the story isn't so much told in the narrative as it is in the footnotes. And there's the rub, as Shakespeare would say. And after you finish the 700+ pages? You may want to read it again because like the house it describes, you may not see the same things a second time.
Rating:
Summary: More Than Just Hype...But Only Just
Review: I heard a great deal of hype about this book when it came out so I got interested (proving that advertising and word-of-mouth really does work). When I finally got around to reading it, I was both captivated and repulsed. The House Of Leaves is a complicated book. My compliments to the author for managing to arrange it in such a fashion. But this works both for and against the book. The basic premise the author came up with is a fascinating one - a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside (a kind of residential TARDIS). And if the author had just stuck to that element of the plot, I believe it would have been a much more rewarding read. Instead he frames this story inside another...and perhaps another depending on how you read it. The author augments the basic story line with the story of the life of Johnny Truant and how he came to intercept the manuscript that describes the dimensionally-challenged house. There were too many instances in which I became bored by the recounting of Johnny and his troubled life. And too many times in which I began to think that the author was attempting to keep too many balls in the air at the same time. Most of all, I was so intrigued with the portion of the plot about the house and its investigation, I became even more disinterested in those parts that seemingly had no connection. All-in-all, Danielewski did an admirable job putting this book together. The way in which it was arranged is truly unique. The layout aides in conveying the horror and confusion of the events of the novel. However, I can't help but think there was a little too much reliance on technique and not enough on good story telling. I do, however, look forward to his next work. I'm sure it will be something completely original and compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Scary book
Review: This is one of the best books that I have read, and I have read alot. This is a complicated book that requires complex thoughts, thus making this a book that is not for everybody. However, the way it is written makes it one of the best horror books ever written. The plot, about an ever-growing house, seems mundane, but with his tricks, and words, the becomes better than what it generally would be. But, the words will get to you to affect you. It will get under your skin, and make you second guess realit, for a little while. But, isn't that what a good book should do? Yhis is a great example of how books should be.
Rating:
Summary: Neither genius nor impostor, but somewhere in the middle...
Review: Sections of House of Leaves are absolutely brilliant. Danielewski is obviously whip-smart, but for me, a good book doesn't strut about, asserting its author's intelligence. While the journeys through the impossible house are often thrilling, the Johnny Truant narrative rarely rises above the level of decent graduate student writing. If the writer believes all the hype he's garnered, his next book will be worse.
Rating: 
Summary: A maze it is, amazing it is not
Review: This book is a very contrived attempt to get the reader lost in the various levels of narritive. While the structure of the book is interesting, and it's great fun to tell others about what you're reading, one is unable to loose oneself in Danielewski's labrynth of leaves. It's not that the book is too complex, although for some readers this will undoubtedly and issue, but the book is needlessly complex. As a matter of fact, the idea behind the book is too push the limits of one's ability to withstand complexity and 'lose' oneself in the text. I really cannot stress this term 'lost' too much in relation to Leaves. In relation to this work, the term becomes some what of a double entendre, as far as the term is broadly understood, anyway. That is, the author's intent is for the reader to get 'lost' in the book, as in to be absorbed by the book. However, the reader becomes so innundated with tangents that they become 'lost' in the sense that they cannot remeber what is going on in the multi-layered narrative that may or may not be a 'plot' (certainly not in the strict sense of 'plot'). While 'plotless' works are the epitome of the post-modern narritive structure (i.e. Seinfeild, Mark Leyner's work), Danieleski simulataniously embraces this technique and attempts to circumvent the ubiquitous question 'what was the point?' by layering meta-narrative in Leaves like layers of rust-proffing on your grandfather's old pick-up truck. And like your grandfather's old pick-up truck, Leaves is going to fall apart before your able to haul that last load home.
Rating: 
Summary: This is not for you
Review: That ought to do it. If you like the dedication "this is not for you", you are probably the kind of reader that will find this book fascinating and memorable. If not, don't bother. The obvious plots of this book are well-known horror themes, not worth buying this frustrating book for, and the footnotes will drive you crazy. For me at least, the best part of this book is the plots that are barely scratched at. Zampano's story, for instance. What is his problem? What started him on this path? Did he read too many HP Lovecraft stories as a kid? What is his deal with the classic labyrinth? I have thought more about Zampano than anyone else in this book. And, of course, Johnny's mother. What an amazing character. At the very end of everything, there she is, the single weirdest thing in the book. Love it, will read it again in a couple of months. Keep pulling it off the shelf to look at the architectural footnotes. This is not for you.
Rating:
Summary: A conventional thriller, buried under too much artifice
Review: Will Navidson, prize-winning photographer, and his beautiful model wife move in to a seemingly innocent house in suburban Virginia with their two pretty children. But the house seems to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Calling in his friend Billy Reston, UVA professor and quadriplegic due to a tragic accident, the professional explorer Holloway and his team, and his loving bear of a brother, Tom, he braves the freezing dark of a house that wants to destroy them all. Am I describing the new Dean Koontz? Nope. What I've just given you is "House Of Leaves" once you scrape off all the crap Danielewski's buried it under. Not what you thought it was, huh? To be fair, Danielewski is an excellent writer. He makes a hideously pretentious academic discussion of a documentary (admittedly a highly unconventional one) gripping. This is a very well-written book, and he has a great future ahead of him. However, he needs to accept what he is; a thriller writer, not an artist. The Johnny Truant sections show he can write other kinds of prose, but this is a conventional thriller to the core, and he should own up to it. That I kept reading "House of Leaves" in spite of the artifice slathered on is a testament to just how good a writer he is. But, along the way, he abuses brackets, decides to switch long S's for F's in one section, and occasionally his stunts even actually work. There are sections where he's trying to make the text mirror the action happening in it, and these actually work. But did we really need Borges, or at least a Borgesian character, as a narrator (he makes it pretty obvious that's who Zampano is, if you pay attention)? Did we really need all the quotes of everything from Rilke to the epic of Gilgamesh to child psychologist Jean Piaget? If his ending and appendices imply what I THINK they're implying, it does make sense, but it's still pretentious on his part. I do recommend this book, but don't be fooled into thinking it's art. A novelty of a conventional thriller is really all it is. Hopefully Danielewski will wake up to this, or read his Stephen King and realize that he has some great footsteps he can follow.
Rating:
Summary: A Mind-Blowing Trip Into the Dark
Review: Wow! I'm going to have to read this one several more times, maybe even write a page-by-page analysis on it, just for the heck of it. This was an incredible book. There's really no way to give a synospis of the story line (um, which story?), or really go into depth about my feelings for the characters (um, which characters?), there's just too much here to write about, and it would take way too much time and space to do it. This book is so deep, so disturbing, and so fabulous, it has instantly moved to the top of my favorite books list. I recommend you read it, whoever you are, whatever your interests are. It will spur your imagination, and leave you wondering about life long into the night. Not to mention looking carefully at every dark space to be sure it isn't expanding. So go! Buy the book, read the book, become changed by the book, and by all means, write in the margins!
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