Rating: 
Summary: New with old
Review: How to make new jewels with old gold. Mark Danielewski is a very talented writer, but he should kbnow better than recycling his best-seller intot less-than best-seller. We are all following him, but not to the point of being blind-folded; To be read, but not too hurriedly.
Rating:
Summary: Good Lord
Review: If you bought this piece of garbage you got ripped off. If you actually liked it then you're an idiot.
There is absolutely no point in reading this if you have HOL because you get the idea of it from the appendix. This is just the same crap written and re-written over and over again. Not the least bit believable or entertaining. Anybody who believes that these letters represent a well-written documentation of a person going insane must be around 12 years old with no experience in the world of literature whatsoever.
It should be declared illegal to write such a completely worthless bunch of crap like this. I'm sure MD is laughing at you fools who are actually purchasing his merchandise. This guy is thoroughly unscrupulous in how he rips off his readers by putting this separate and completely unnecessary work of his on the market. It is an embarrassment to literature, be it experimental or conventional.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartbreaking and paranoid, tender and frustrating
Review: Many Great Writer's From Kurt Vonnegut To H.P. Lovecraft Have Taken Elements Of There Stories And Used Them Again So You Can't Criticize Danielewski For That. And Of Course It's Not Going To Be As Good As House Of Leaves. House Of Leaves Had More To It. It Is A Good Book As A Sort Of Sidestory To House OF Leaves.
Rating:
Summary: To It's Critics
Review: Many Great Writer's From Kurt Vonnegut To H.P. Lovecraft Have Taken Elements Of There Stories And Used Them Again So You Can't Criticize Danielewski For That. And Of Course It's Not Going To Be As Good As House Of Leaves. House Of Leaves Had More To It. It Is A Good Book As A Sort Of Sidestory To House OF Leaves.
Rating:
Summary: Heartbreaking and paranoid, tender and frustrating
Review: Near poetry culled from the Gordian knot that is the 'book of leaves'. A mad womans letters to her young son from a mental institution. Heartbreaking and paranoid, tender and frustrating all that can lay dormant from a mother-child relationship in the "normal" world. I am pleased to know that they have chosen to produce this "story" apart from it's original form. I'm sure I'll read it again one day.
Rating:
Summary: New with old
Review: not only this again setences gone oddly old dogs apex systems haven out unisex satan existance october fire ligament extreme armor violent explosive sign-offjhk-mzd-jt-Z.-atl-hol-twl- yggdrasil tod moc
Rating: 
Summary: they have found a way to break me ...
Review: not only this again setences gone oddly old dogs apex systems haven out unisex satan existance october fire ligament extreme armor violent explosive sign-off jhk-mzd-jt-Z.-atl-hol-twl- yggdrasil tod moc
Rating: 
Summary: Instead of II-E
Review: Rather than reading Appendix II-E of House of Leaves and then reading Whalestoe Letters, you might as well read the latter instead of the former. The major difference is that, where II-E shows a fairly linear descent from sanity to insanity, WL provides a more complex story, showing that Pelafina had earlier episodes of madness than II-E lets on. In and of itself, WL doesn't really do much, but it does flush out the story of House of Leaves a bit.
Rating:
Summary: Madness In Miniature
Review: The book is short, but it really keeps your attention. Danielewski does a brilliant job of portraying a woman on, and over, the edge. The first person authoress of the letters comprising Whalestoe's text is a mother in a madhouse, writing to her estranged son, John. She seems a nice enough woman to begin with, if a bit dramatic and given to airs - what is she doing locked up in a loony-bin? That, of course, is the story. As the letters progress, the institutionalized woman's state of mind becomes more apparent, as does her history. Eventually, it all spills out - and quite memorably, at that. I'm especially impressed with this book for a personal reason, which is that I knew a woman with a near-identical history in what was then our local mental hospital, over thirty years ago. Like the woman narrating Danilewski's book in her epistles, you wouldn't have had any idea there was anything wrong with her upon first meeting. Once you got to know why she was locked up, it chilled you. I was less than ten years old, and it made the blood drain from my face, even then. But I couldn't help liking her and feeling sorry for her, at the same time. And that is the real beauty of Danielewski's character portrayal: the writer of the letters remains sympathetic, despite her past. The reader feels genuine pity, once the reason for her incarceration is understood and its effects on her become evident. She's a sometimes frightening woman, but very sad at the same time. Her life has been spent in a sort of penance, and her letters to her son are sometimes heartwrenching. In a number of words amounting only to a glorified novella, Danielewski convincingly tells an entire life story, and makes you feel it with surprising depth. I haven't read the author's House of Leaves, but will now that I've read this remarkable tour de force of minimalist writing and psychological portraiture.
Rating:
Summary: Madness In Miniature
Review: The book is short, but it really keeps your attention. Danielewski does a brilliant job of portraying a woman on, and over, the edge. The first person authoress of the letters comprising Whalestoe's text is a mother in a madhouse, writing to her estranged son, John. She seems a nice enough woman to begin with, if a bit dramatic and given to airs - what is she doing locked up in a loony-bin? That, of course, is the story. As the letters progress, the institutionalized woman's state of mind becomes more apparent, as does her history. Eventually, it all spills out - and quite memorably, at that. I'm especially impressed with this book for a personal reason, which is that I knew a woman with a near-identical history in what was then our local mental hospital, over thirty years ago. Like the woman narrating Danilewski's book in her epistles, you wouldn't have had any idea there was anything wrong with her upon first meeting. Once you got to know why she was locked up, it chilled you. I was less than ten years old, and it made the blood drain from my face, even then. But I couldn't help liking her and feeling sorry for her, at the same time. And that is the real beauty of Danielewski's character portrayal: the writer of the letters remains sympathetic, despite her past. The reader feels genuine pity, once the reason for her incarceration is understood and its effects on her become evident. She's a sometimes frightening woman, but very sad at the same time. Her life has been spent in a sort of penance, and her letters to her son are sometimes heartwrenching. In a number of words amounting only to a glorified novella, Danielewski convincingly tells an entire life story, and makes you feel it with surprising depth. I haven't read the author's House of Leaves, but will now that I've read this remarkable tour de force of minimalist writing and psychological portraiture.
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