Rating: 
Summary: Complex classic
Review: "House of Stairs" is about five teenagers who are placed in a surreal environment as part of a bizzare psychological experiment in conditioning. At first, all behave as predicted, and their behaviour is not very pretty. As nearly every reviewer has commented, the situation is something like that in "Lord of the Flies" or Jules Verne's similar but more gentle story, "The Long Vacation." Yet the point of the story is not that all people are innately savage and vicious. Rather, Sleator tells us that humans, even when beset by malicious companions and placed in a weird situation for no reason, can follow their deepest beliefs, and they can do this even when doing so is detrimental to them in every possible way that they can see. The book focuses on human stubborness and unaccountability, which are two of our irritating traits as well as our redeeming graces (reminding one of "A Wrinkle in Time"), while at the same time making it clear that those who embrace manipulation and its rewards suffer a nasty fate. Sleator thus affirms the freedom of the human will and rejects determinism, while at the same time making it clear that certain results flow inevitably from certain actions.
Rating:
Summary: Complex classic
Review: "House of Stairs" is about five teenagers who are placed in a surreal environment as part of a bizzare psychological experiment in conditioning. At first, all behave as predicted, and their behaviour is not very pretty. As nearly every reviewer has commented, the situation is something like that in "Lord of the Flies" or Jules Verne's similar but more gentle story, "The Long Vacation." Yet the point of the story is not that all people are innately savage and vicious. Rather, Sleator tells us that humans, even when beset by malicious companions and placed in a weird situation for no reason, can follow their deepest beliefs, and they can do this even when doing so is detrimental to them in every possible way that they can see. The book focuses on human stubborness and unaccountability, which are two of our irritating traits as well as our redeeming graces (reminding one of "A Wrinkle in Time"), while at the same time making it clear that those who embrace manipulation and its rewards suffer a nasty fate. Sleator thus affirms the freedom of the human will and rejects determinism, while at the same time making it clear that certain results flow inevitably from certain actions.
Rating: 
Summary: I'd forgotten how good this was...
Review: ..This is a tight, fast-paced morality play about a group of five teenagers -- orphans, all -- thrown into a twisted experiment in conditioning.I'd forgotten how little of this book is actually spent examining the gargantuan House of Stairs the characters find themselves in. Most of the book takes place on one landing in the labyrinth, near the food machine. It is here that the characters examine themselves and each other, and ultimately are faced with a choice between losing their lives and losing their souls. It's chilling...
Rating:
Summary: An Adult Book for Kids
Review: Easily the finest of Sleator's works, this book is about five 16-year olds who are then subjected to Pavlovian conditioning in order to . . . well I don't want to spoil the book completely. It is set against a background of a futuristic world gone bad though virtually all of the action takes place in the creepy house of stairs with only the five teenagers present. An excellent morality tale that will make people of any age think. I've read it loads of times over the years and still like it. It might not be appropriate for younger kids of high reading ability (or should at least be discussed with them afterward). On the other hand, it is a work to be recommended precisely because it doesn't shy away from tough issues that many adult works grapple with.
Rating:
Summary: House of Stairs
Review: Five orphans are brought to this place where only stairs, a red machine, and a toliet are present. The stairs go on forever and the whole place is white. The five orphans are split up at the starting then meet eachother at the red machine. They find out they are all the same age and are all orphans.
The red machine pops food out when something the teens do at random. This machine starts to take over their lives by making them turn against eachother. At times they do some pretty bad stuff to eachother. By this time they are all insane.
I really enjoyed this book. It really shows what people will do for what they. Just to survive will beat up others and play rotten tricks on them. I got into this book to where i hated some of the charecters beacause of what they did. I strongly think you should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: House of Stairs
Review: House of Stairs by William Sleator Book Review by Geremy Brosmer "'When are they going to take us out?' Blossom wailed as everybody came back to the landing." Peter, Lola, Blossom, Abigail, and Oliver are all orphans and all sixteen. All of them have suddenly been put into a big room full of nothing but stairs. They find a food machine that makes the kids do crazy stuff like stick out their tongues, dance, and lie to get the food machine to give them food.
I think Sleator could have made Blossom a little less easy to hate because he just makes her so mean and snobby and self centered. He also could have had a better concept because he just puts four orphaned teenagers in this big room full of stairs for no reason. I liked the way he always kept me on my toes. I was up till ten reading this book one night. He described everything so well I could almost see a picture in my head about what was happening.
William Sleator is mostly a science-fiction writer. He's only written one book that's not science-fiction. I would recommend this to anybody who likes sci-fi.
Find out more by reading House of Stairs by William Sleator.
Rating:
Summary: House of Stairs illuminated the depths of the human spirit.
Review: House of Stairs chilled me to the very core. Sleator really made the reader feel as if they were trapped in the house of stairs with the characters, left to their natural instincts for survival. It was scary to discover how far our instincts will go, even to the point of harming others. The book could be a definite prequel for 1984, testing just how much the human spirit can plummet before death. The ending seemed a tad unrealistic, but it was a young adult novel, and happy endings are better anyways
Rating: 
Summary: this book was awful!
Review: How could anyone possibly like this book? The plot was confusing, and besides the fact, it was soooo stupid! Could you get anymore ridiculus? Give me a break. Don't read this book unless you have read every other written thing in the history of humankind, because it is a total waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: A Badly Written Novel
Review: I did not like this book and especially would not recommend it to young readers. It is full of profanity and bad language. If it were a movie, it would probably be rated R. There is also much repetition and very little information about the character's lives before they were put in the house of stairs. And there's hardly any information about the outside world which is supposed to be somewhat futuristic. Overall, it was NOT a good book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book for Adults Too!
Review: I first read this book 25 years ago, when I was in the 7th grade. Of the (literally) thousands of books that I read during my childhood - this book belongs with the dozen or so that have never been forgotton. Recently I reread this classic, and was just as impressed and impacted by its thought provoking and captivating premise. Because the setting is futuristic, this book is not dated at all. I'm a mom with kids of various ages and would NOT recommend this book for anyone under the age of 12 to 13 - but I would also not classify it a "young adult" novel. Older adults will love it too!
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