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House of Holes

3.01 of 5 stars 3.01 · rating details · 1,181 ratings · 308 reviews

Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a hole in a golf course. Luna meets a man made of light bulbs at a tanning parlor. So begins Nicholson Baker’s fuse-blowing, sex-positive escapade, House of Holes. Baker, the bestselling author of The Mezzanine, Vox, and The Fermata, who “writes like no one else in America” (Newsweek), returns to erotic terri...more

Hardcover, 262 pages

Published August 9th 2011 by Simon & Schuster

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Feb 27, 2012 Lee rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is the easily the worst book I've read (let alone bought new in freaking hardcover!) in as long as I can remember. I want my money back and the time it took to read the first 100 pages and skim the rest. The tone is off, I think. If you're gonna basically present pornographic magical realism without much character development or plot, the language should probably be a lot more elevated so there's at least a bit of titillating conflict between form and content, and this author knows how to e...more

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Mar 17, 2012 rachel rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, i-can-t-believe-i-m-reading-this, sci-fi-fantasy, 2012

You know how there are certain writers -- Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Peter Carey-types -- who are such darlings of the literary world that we joke that they could probably write anything and be lauded by The New York Times?

This is Nicholson Baker writing that "anything" book, trying that experiment.

There is a blurb on the back of House of Holes from Charles McGrath, of The New York Times Magazine, that reads: "When he is not writing about sex (and also when he is), Baker is one of the most beau...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Sam Quixote rated it 4 of 5 stars

Imagine a cross between a hardcore porno and Alice in Wonderland, then throw in some excellent writing and some of the most imaginative descriptions of a man's penis you're ever going to read and you have Nicholson Baker's latest novel "House of Holes". Baker, if you're new to him, is a fantastically wide ranging writer who has written a novel about the hypothetical assassination of George W Bush, a non-fiction book about library cataloguing, two erotic novels, one of which was made famous by Mo...more Imagine a cross between a hardcore porno and Alice in Wonderland, then throw in some excellent writing and some of the most imaginative descriptions of a man's penis you're ever going to read and you have Nicholson Baker's latest novel "House of Holes". Baker, if you're new to him, is a fantastically wide ranging writer who has written a novel about the hypothetical assassination of George W Bush, a non-fiction book about library cataloguing, two erotic novels, one of which was made famous by Monica Lewinsky after she handed a copy to Bill Clinton (the rest is history), a stream of consciousness non-fiction fan note to John Updike, and a history book highlighting the Allied leaders support of Hitler in the run up to WW2. In short, this writer's output is surprising to say the least.

The novel centres around an otherworldy luxury brothel called House of Holes which is located in some dreamscape where the visitors pay extortionate sums of money to have their wildest dreams fulfilled. How they get there is a variety of ways - through a straw in a drink, a washing machine, via the hole in the end of a penis, through someone's fingers when they make an "O" shape. Couple this with scenes such as the opening chapter where a disembodied arm seduces a young woman followed by a woman in a singles bar who lays a silver egg and you realise this is a novel where you don't know what's going to happen next.

Other examples are the ways in which customers are punished. Heads are taken off of bodies and then reattached later, meanwhile the headless bodies wander about as normal. Arms and legs are taken off, while genitalia is removed and replaced with the opposite sex's, and so on. All very trippy, I know.

Here's a sample paragraph to give you an idea of the kind of inspired writing you get throughout the book: "Chuck's thundertube of d*ckmeat started sliding in... then he slammed into her train station again. His c*ck train was commuting in and out of her p*ssyhole, filling and emptying it by turns, and she loved it...then he made... a sound like a monster in a Japanese monster movie, and she felt a flowering of deep warmth inside her, and the sense of hot sperm that surrounded the prow of his still thrusting peckerd*ckc*ck." (p.20)

Baker's said in recent interviews that he had a great time writing the book and it's really obvious to reader that there is an exuberance in the writing of the strangest and most challenging scenes that really springs off the page at you. Dialogue like "Do you want this ham steak of a Dr D*ck that's so stuffed with sp*nk that I'm ready to blow this swollen sackload all over you?" "Yes Mr F*ckwizard, we want that fully sp*nkloaded meatloaf of a ham steak of a d*ck" (p.23)

I really laughed at several moments in this book. As bizarre as the book got, and if you're a plot driven reader then you'll be better off not picking this up as it's really a series of bizarre scenes merged with tons of sex rather than a story, I stuck with it just for the language. Some highlights include the various names given to penises - "hot w*nky stick" (p.27), "hunky sp*nk pipes" (p.248), "rogue jacquard" (p.206) and best of all "Dave angled out his Malcolm Gladwell" (p.184).

There are a number of characters in the book who go through strange adventures and scenarios, I won't go into them here as you'll want to discover them for yourselves, but I will say that apart from the Madam of the house, Lila, none of them were ever really memorably written. It's the situations they find themselves in that stick with you rather than the people involved. Similarly, because there is no plot, the book does become a bit tiresome by the end. I did finish and enjoyed it while it lasted but in the end I'm not sure I could have read it if it were longer than 262 pages.

If you've got a good sense of humour and are feeling adventurous, spend some time with this, possibly the most inventive novel of 2011. Read it for the language which is as spicy as the things the characters in the book get up to. You know every year in the UK they have a bad sex award for books? It's for sex scenes written embarrassingly in a work of fiction. I love that Baker saw that and thought "just a scene? Why not an entire book?", then went ahead and wrote it. Because while I did get tired of the endless sex and madness by the end, I'm thankful that somebody like Baker wrote it. 3 stars for the book and an extra star for the balls on this guy. God bless you sir, I hope your inspired work is read in the spirit in which it was offered - fun! (less)

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Aug 09, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Nicholson Baker has proven that he can make the familiar very strange. Consider his first novel, MEZZANINE, where a man is on a lunch hour hunt for shoelaces. All the odds and ends, the digressions and pop-up thoughts that can enter a desultory mind, are playfully and artfully presented in a readable and engaging manner. In VOX, a phone call between a lonely man and woman hook up on the phone. They are able to talk about everyday matters and lure the reader into their idle chatter, so that the s...more

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May 06, 2013 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Hilarious, surreal, literate, erotic, great word coinages/metaphors.

notes/quotes
23..their slippy sloppy f fountains on display
26..ease into for 15 seconds..for femmes: The Squat Line
30..all whisper, whisper (cf UK idiom: softly softly: In a very tactful, careful, or nondisruptive manner.)
32..the Pearloiner..
39..scrub, don't tug.
42..in his thrummiest voice
47..sherry cobbler, slobbering kitty, he his bulldog
71..Rhumpa unbuttons her shirt...the N Haven people were wealthy & under-read
92..whip...more

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May 06, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

This review initially ran in the New York Journal of Books. I reproduce it here:

“I imagine a sensual man . . . strong-jawed, financially secure, who understands my needs and is not threatened by them.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, honey, can you please cut the boilerplate?”

This exchange occurs halfway into Nicholson Baker’s provocative new novel, House of Holes. Except 'provocative' isn’t quite the word for it.

To provoke readers is to nudge them past their comfort zones, ask them to go places they’re...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Kevin E. rated it 3 of 5 stars

The people in Nicholson Baker's delightful 'House of Holes' don't get away with lies for very long: they attempt to cover their desires with what they believe they should feel but it all comes out in the end. And in the front. And around the side. Wherever an appendage can be shoved... well, it gets shoved there.[return][return]This is one filthy book, stuffed with sex acts that make the Hollywood porno epic 'Caligula' look like a family film. Baker doesn't attempt much contextualizing for the a...more The people in Nicholson Baker's delightful 'House of Holes' don't get away with lies for very long: they attempt to cover their desires with what they believe they should feel but it all comes out in the end. And in the front. And around the side. Wherever an appendage can be shoved... well, it gets shoved there.[return][return]This is one filthy book, stuffed with sex acts that make the Hollywood porno epic 'Caligula' look like a family film. Baker doesn't attempt much contextualizing for the acts and, after about 100 pages, the book starts to feel like an unholy appendix to Edith Hamilton's classic on mythology. This may be the point as, in the absence of any communication that lets in the lies, what we've got is a strange set of mythological shorts that posit a utopia wherein nobody bothers with obscuring langauge. [return][return]The book isn't an intellectual tour-de-force but it does what it does supremely well -- hilarious plays on language, thorough descriptions of rigorous sex acts and nothing but high spirits as Bizarroland catharsis is reached via almightly orgasm. In a word: refreshing. The book lacks even a touch of pretense as it moves forward through every act in the book and generates some good-natured commentary along the way. It's strangely hopeful, a not-that-perverse-while-being-perverse look at how the language of the unconscious works when people say EXACTLY what they want. And what they want is to be ravished in highly improbable, physically demanding (if not biologically impossible) ways. It's probably not all that far off from what we get when we dream. In some ways. [return][return]Recommended for the spectacular wordplay (one sentence, involving two yellow school buses, will stick with me for decades) and all-out honesty. Literature rarely does what 'House of Holes' pulls off just about perfectly and even if it got a bit tedious for me I closed up shop with the feeling that I'd learned something for all the jetting fluids, multi-tooled pornmonsters. And if you feel yourself fading I ask this: stick around for the last, brief chapter. Baker isn't some hack writing with one hand tied behind his back: he's an enthusiastic writer's writer. One of the better books of 2011.(less)

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May 13, 2013 Martin McClellan rated it 4 of 5 stars

As Baker's response to sexless vampire fiction, I think this is hilarious. Where the former has emotion but no desire, Baker's is all desire without (much) emotion. It is an absurdity. For all the sex (and it's all sex), it's not very sexy. Farcical and full of euphemisms (for male genitalia: his "fondling fathers", his "Malcolm Gladwell") and ribald riffs on the common vernacular, it's closer to an exercise than a plotted novel.

If you're looking for erotica, that is, something to cause exciteme...more

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May 12, 2013 Alan rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sybarites and jades

Recommended to Alan by: Previous work

What. The. Fuck? That is literally the question... House of Holes is, as far as I can tell, about sex—and nothing but sex. As the subtitle says (at least he's not burying the lede!), this is "a book of raunch."

Nicholson Baker starts as explicitly as he means to go on. In the first chapter, Shandee and her roommate Rianne have sex with a disembodied, still living arm. Baker's book proceeds from there like a whole series of Richard Brautigan's wet dreams, or maybe some of Rudy Rucker (author of Th ...more What. The. Fuck? That is literally the question... House of Holes is, as far as I can tell, about sex—and nothing but sex. As the subtitle says (at least he's not burying the lede!), this is "a book of raunch."

Nicholson Baker starts as explicitly as he means to go on. In the first chapter, Shandee and her roommate Rianne have sex with a disembodied, still living arm. Baker's book proceeds from there like a whole series of Richard Brautigan's wet dreams, or maybe some of Rudy Rucker (author of The Sex Sphere)'s more febrile imaginings... from Dave's disembodied arm to penis trees, the twelve immersive screens of the Porndecahedron, the Masturboats, Pornsuckers and groanrooms... some really inventive concepts, but ultimately it all comes across as labored and unconvincing.

WIth such unrealistic situations, surely the characters have a compensatory depth and verisimilitude? No such luck... they're one-note, unrealistically passive and uniformly accepting of the surreal events, intrusions (and extrusions) going on around them (and being done to them). When, late in the book, one offstage character actually raises some objections to the way his wife is being importuned, his attitude comes as something of a surprise. And of course it has no effect.

But at least the dialogue is rich and heartfelt, right? Nope... Baker bends over backward straining for unique synonyms for body parts and for the uses to which they get put, and a lot of his choices just sound silly. Almost every page has something like this bit, randomly chosen from p.162:

"Just the sounds of people just—just doing the happy humperdinkle, eh? Just doing it and loving it. Hooooooo."

Now, I'm sure there are plenty of blue-noses and their associated brown-nosers who'd object on principle to the relentlessly graphic sex in this book. I'm not in that camp at all—I'm fine with explicit prose (and in fact was hoping for a bit of a zipper-lifter, to appropriate a phrase which could easily have appeared in House of Holes itself, though it doesn't seem to have). Instead, I ended up simply mystified by this book—what was the point? Despite all of the relentless activity, it seemed to have no—you should forgive the expression—climax.

I suspect House of Holes may have been intended as a psychological test—interesting not so much for its own sake as for the reactions it provokes in its readers.

If it is such a test, though, I think I failed...(less)

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Apr 02, 2013 Dirk rated it 4 of 5 stars

The House of Holes

With Fifty Shades of Grey giving pornography a bad name, it's time to turn to Nicholson Baker's The House of Holes. Unlike Fifty Shades of Grey, the prose in House of Holes in skillful, inventive, and playful.

This book is fun to read; it is fun for the lighthearted and imaginative sex, and its ever-bubbling imagination and use of language. The plot is episodic. There is an overarching story of the character Dave's Arm reuniting with Dave, but basically it is divided into many s...more

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Feb 28, 2013 Rand rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: say-tire, fucking

House of Holes is porn in the same sense that Vonnegut's later output is science fiction (both use the conventions of those genres for a higher purpose; that purpose ismore easily dismissed here)
but still this book is more A Dirty Shame than Vox. Vox was more fun in that there was real character development. Here, the characters start to run together a bit.

I happened to hear Baker read during his Human Smoke tour. It was in a basement with maybe ten other people. While getting stuff signed, I a...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Therese rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who appreciate funny porn, fans of surrealism and magical realism

Shelves: dating-and-relationships, funny, literary-and-general-fiction, magical-realism, short-stories, research-spy-novel

A series of linked abusurdist erotic vignettes, with strong doses of surrealism and humor.

So this is a sex book, make no mistake. From reading formal book reviews beforehand I had the impression it was a novel with a plot, but it's not really that - though characters and places and concepts recur, there's no real extended story arc, it's more a series of delightfully absurd short stories. In a twisted kind of way, it reminded me of Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories From Wayside School, if the cha...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Bucky Mcmahon rated it 4 of 5 stars

House of Holes certainly isn't for everyone--and I would decline to say it's for me either. On the other hand, I laughed out loud a dozen times (and I'm as tough a laugh as an Easter Island moai), encountering numerous candidates for the most preposterous sentence ever written. The engines of this absurdity are the ever-lovin' sex organs, with vestigal American citizens along for the ride to the big O. The titular (pun unavoidable eventually) House of Holes functions as both an exclusive (or at...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Chance rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 10, 2011 Jenn rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No one

I can't believe I spent valuable minutes of my life finishing this book, but I have liked most of his other works, and this one got a pretty good review in the NYT, so I kept hoping that something would happen to rescue what was, from start to finish, probably the most disturbing exploration (can it even be called that? I can't think of an adequate word) of sexuality that I've encountered. Not fun. Not sexy. Not liberating. Not witty. It's like a 15-year-old who has read some Tom Robbins novels...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Elf M. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Nicholson Baker writes three kinds of books: non-fiction, literary fiction, and porn. It's odd that although he's known for the phone-sex masterpiece Vox, the only thing I'd ever read by him was The Anthologist, a wonky first-person slow-moving story about a poetry writer and editor with a near-fatal case of writer's block. It was well-written and has a solid voice. So when his latest porn novel, House of Holes was released, I had to buy a copy.

House of Holes is an homage to the Golden Age of Po ...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Chuck rated it 2 of 5 stars

First, a commercial message from the author: "Hi folks, this is NB. If you have a sex ache that needs relief, jump onto a Smutship and jig right over to the House of Holes. You'll find all sorts of gratification available, the huge variety limited only by my own imagination. Ask and ye shall receive -- inhibitionists need not apply. No guilt, no commitment, no STDs, and no birth control required. Guys, your Wankee Doodlers can explore luscious love canals, and gals, pulchritudinous plum plungers...more First, a commercial message from the author: "Hi folks, this is NB. If you have a sex ache that needs relief, jump onto a Smutship and jig right over to the House of Holes. You'll find all sorts of gratification available, the huge variety limited only by my own imagination. Ask and ye shall receive -- inhibitionists need not apply. No guilt, no commitment, no STDs, and no birth control required. Guys, your Wankee Doodlers can explore luscious love canals, and gals, pulchritudinous plum plungers stand ready to serve your juicy fruit-folds. Come one, come all."

Well, if imitation* is really flattering, then I hope that Nicholson Baker is at least mildly gratified, in the unlikely event that he's reading this review. In any case, he's surely gratified by the fact that, perhaps due to positive notices in such august publications as The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, House of Holes is selling briskly. On Amazon, it is already doing far better than two of Baker's earlier and truly serious works -- The Mezzanine and U & I -- and it is even outstripping (sorry, can't help those puns) his raunchy Vox, notoriously given to Bill Clinton by Monica Lewinsky.

Nevertheless, the publication of House of Holes is not a major literary event. No deep plot or character development appears here to interfere with the unrelenting march of orgasmic vignettes. The book does exhibit a fertile imagination and sporadic humor, but its few literary pretensions reduce to some clever puns and occasional references to cultural luminaries like Borodin, Dickens, and Hawking. Its principal achievement is probably that it yields a huge thesaurus of novel synonyms for various body parts, notably genitalia. Despite its graphic depiction of sexual activity, Baker's book is remarkably untitillating (if it's real porn that you seek, look elsewhere unless the HOH's pornsucker airship has already eradicated it). The most appreciative audience for House of Holes is likely to be young adolescents.

To be sure, in Baker's fantasy realm of relationless sex there are a few admirable social values on display, e.g., sexual freedom, openness, and honesty. And although a trip to the House of Holes is primarily aimed at fostering heterosexual activity, other types of arrangements occasionally appear, entirely devoid of negative judgment. Such virtues are attained without any social cost or ultimate personal sacrifice; however, out-of-pocket expenses can be substantial.

There's no such thing as kinky sex in the House of Holes; every technique appears to be regarded as perfectly normal. For example, women visiting the House of Holes sometimes select a no-brainer option: sex with a headless (but otherwise alive) male body. Perhaps that's an apt metaphor for our contemporary popular culture, in which professional models and athletes are spectacularly rewarded, whereas the TV show Jeopardy constitutes our most profound national celebration of intellectual activity.

[*I'm reasonably confident that all of the "special-purpose" terminology in the opening paragraph of this review is imitation rather than plagiarism, but certifying that claim would require a very careful re-reading of House of Holes, and at this point my time could be better spent. If it happens that I have unwittingly appropriated any of Baker's exact terminology, then I guess that's testimony to the power of his language to infiltrate our own vocabularies unconsciously.](less)

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Sep 27, 2011 Graham rated it 2 of 5 stars

The complexity of the sentences (for the most part) feels at about an eighth grade level. Characters are two-dimensional and have names like Shandee and Dune. There is usually no narrative link from one scene to the next. Dialog is bland but purposeful, with the occasional droll pun. It's smut. Not only does Baker seem uninterested in transcending that genre, he works as its preservationist. His book is a fanciful but astute replica of raunchy fiction. As wacky as the scenes are, Baker still wri...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars

What a great book. I am so glad this book exists. This book needed to exist. This book has no plot. This book has no character development. Aside from descriptions of sexual body parts, this book has very little character description. What it does have, though, are three things we can always use more of: first, it has lots of sex. Second, it has some of the best diction of any book I've ever read. So many great descriptive terms for body parts and acts that are always overly-purple in their word...more

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Aug 31, 2011 Tony rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Baker, Nicholson. HOUSE OF HOLES: a book of raunch. (2011). **.
I’ve admired Mr. Baker’s writing over the years because of the new perspectives he has been able to bring to the printed page. His writing, to say the least, has been tilling new grounds for years now. It seems, however, with this book, that he has taken tilling to heart. The House in the title is kind of like a sexual theme park that literally sucks people in to explore the various amusement rides. Anything goes here. Needless to s...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Holly rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

You know what they say about bonobos (anytime anyplace anyone/everyone everywhichway)? That's this book. It's a comic novel, with daffy, absurd, over-the-top sexual scenarios enacted by Dr Seuss-like characters, with no story arc and no progression. It's demented, but not depraved. The House of Holes is a hedonistic fantasy universe where all the sex is consensual and there is no risk, no danger, no disease, no pregnancy. But, like bad porn, there is absolutely no subtlety.

Baker did achieve som...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Mike Smith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Imagine, if you can, a a novel that combines the fantasy of Alice in Wonderland, the plot structure of the old TV show "Fantasy Island", the erotica of Penthouse, and the social satire of Gulliver's Travels, and you might have an approximation of House of Holes. The House of Holes is a pleasure resort of indeterminate location. It can only be reached indirectly, through magical tunnels, hedges, drinking straws, laundromat dryers, golf course holes, and assorted other apertures. You can have pret...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Gena rated it 4 of 5 stars

Gleeful and hilarious -- deftly indulges in the absurdity of sex without undermining pleasure. Possibly the only writing about sex I've ever read that is more about pleasure than about desire, which makes it--while graphic--oddly wholesome. Elaine Blaire nailed it (ha ha) in her NYRB review:

The wish behind Baker’s idyll is to be rid of the notion of female sexual abjection. Not only does this allow women greater sexual abandon, the book implies, but it also liberates men: the male characters don...more Gleeful and hilarious -- deftly indulges in the absurdity of sex without undermining pleasure. Possibly the only writing about sex I've ever read that is more about pleasure than about desire, which makes it--while graphic--oddly wholesome. Elaine Blaire nailed it (ha ha) in her NYRB review:

The wish behind Baker’s idyll is to be rid of the notion of female sexual abjection. Not only does this allow women greater sexual abandon, the book implies, but it also liberates men: the male characters don’t have to worry about offending or abusing women, nor do they have to worry about calling them for a second date.

For you and me this utopia probably comes too late to improve us. But it has profound possibilities for the education of our offspring. In a recent New York Times Magazine profile of Baker, his seventeen-year-old son says that he has not read House of Holes and has no plans to read it, at least not while living with his parents. That seems sensible given his circumstances, but for the rest of us, the good news is that there is nothing in House of Holes that we wouldn’t want our youth to read. Indeed it is exactly the sort of filth that you would want them to read first (if you don’t mind exposing them to something so decidedly heterosexual).

In the traditional sex talk, parents don’t say much about pleasure—presumably neither party wants to get into details. But wouldn’t it be nice for parents to have a way to convey our highest ideals on the subject? House of Holes will introduce impressionable readers to many interesting sexual possibilities without a whisper of stereotype or slur. You can be sure that no matter what scene your children are masturbating to, they are not objectifying women. But you will have to make sure that they accidentally stumble on it soon, before they find the Internet, if they are to have a fighting chance at being wholesome and delightful fuckers instead of hopelessly depraved ones like yourself.

Read Blair's whole review at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...(less)

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Aug 24, 2011 Michael Steger rated it 3 of 5 stars

Whimsical, Rabelasian fun. Do I mean Rabelasian, or Aristophanic? Is Aristophanic even a word? It is certainly not Aristotelean, or not quite, anyway (it does have a beginning, middle, and end). It is bawdy and ribald, in a rather straight-white-male sort of way. It is not erotic, say, in the way Anais Nin's 'Delta of Venus' is erotic; and it is not disturbing, say, in the way that the Marquis de Sade's '120 Days of Sodom' is disturbing. On the contrary, 'House of Holes' is suffused with Baker's...more

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May 06, 2013 Colin rated it 4 of 5 stars

For everyone thinking this book is low-brow or far too immature for their ``patrician`` tastes, you need to realize that this book is aware of how goofy and odd it is. I didn't read this expecting it to be a serious novel. I think when you're writing about crude topics such as literotica, you need to not only be self-aware, but also revel in the humor that this genre allows. Books such as "50 Shades of Grey" take themselves too seriously, and as a result, become this pseudo-intellectual "analysi...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Marc Nash rated it 2 of 5 stars

Baker's written beautifully, intensely & intimately on the theme of sex before, in

and

. Here he goes into completely overdrive and loses all the subtlety evidenced by those two books.

It's a knockabout book of literary knob and tit gags, where must of the bravura is to be drawn from contemplation of the games he plays with words and the creation of tasty neologisms as he comes up with yet another way to describe a d**k or fl**ge. yet while its language tries to be lyrical, it's not poetic...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Laura rated it 1 of 5 stars

First off, I’m not a prude by an means. I personally enjoy a little erotic novel every now and again just like everybody else. However, this book (House of Holes) is not just erotic, it takes kinky sex to the next level (mixed with a little sci-fi). I can not really put into words how odd this compilation of stories was. Let me give it a try; (i) there is a woman who gets each foot fucked by a different man from behind a wall with cut-outs for each foot, (ii) a man actually fucks a hole he dug i...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Joanna Aira rated it 2 of 5 stars

I bought this book not reading the summary on the book jacket, because I THOUGHT I remember what it's about because I read book summaries of the books that I'd like to read, but when I got home and opened the book, that's when I realized that it's a different book, and I got a bit of a shock from reading House of Holes because it's just so...
Vulgar.
It's so weird.
And most of the time, kind of disgusting.

I'm not sure if the scenarios and characters in this book have some kind of symbolic meaning o...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Neryssa rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No One

Oh, boy. House of Holes was extremely disjointed and felt like an amateur attempt at erotica. I have a feeling this review is going to be extremely disjointed. I read someone's review in which he read the first 100 pages and then just skimmed the rest of the book. I think he was onto something there. I actually read it through -- I was really rooting for it to get...better? more cohesive? not sure... -- but it never, ever did. It stayed trite, and I just couldn't get past the cartoon-ish feel th...more

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Oct 08, 2011 Sara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: erotic

Very appropriately subtitled "A Book of Raunch" Nicholson Baker's delightful, completely filthy journey through the fantastical sex resort "The House of Holes" has got to be one of the most unexpectedly charming and uplifting books I've read in awhile.

It took me some time to figure out just what it was I was enjoying so much about this series of ever so slightly connecting and intersecting tales of the various patrons of a metaphysical, is it real or isn't it, sex resort where patrons can realiz...more Very appropriately subtitled "A Book of Raunch" Nicholson Baker's delightful, completely filthy journey through the fantastical sex resort "The House of Holes" has got to be one of the most unexpectedly charming and uplifting books I've read in awhile.

It took me some time to figure out just what it was I was enjoying so much about this series of ever so slightly connecting and intersecting tales of the various patrons of a metaphysical, is it real or isn't it, sex resort where patrons can realize their innermost (to the point where THEY may not even know they have them) fantasies.

Having never read Baker before I've got nothing to compare this to, but I was immediately struck by the impersonal nature of his characters. His writing is very crisp and impersonal. No one is surprised by even the most bizarre sexual kink and everyone is willing to try anything! There is a jarring lack of feeling in Baker's character that is at first a little disturbing given the nature of his material. But about a 1/4 of the way through the book I realized I was kind of enjoying the distinct lack of emotional hang ups. His characters are just so happy! It's extremely liberating to read about people having lots of crazy, kooky, fantastic sex and using the most insane, filthy language while doing it and not having to wade through a lot of emotional drama. No one is worried about anyone's feelings or self esteem or whether they'll be respected in the morning. When love is discussed or mentioned its as a beautiful, warm bath, kind of sentiment that's meant to be enjoyed and given freely not treated like a sacred cow that needs constant stroking and analysis.

I'm not saying I'd like to live in Baker's House of Holes but damned if it doesn't sound like a nice place to visit.

If you're not bothered by epically filthy language (this man has invented ways to describe penis's and vagina's that no one in the history of language as even considered before) take a chance with this. Its just a real feel good read. A REALLLY feel good read.(less)

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About Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is a contemporary American writer of fiction and non-fiction. As a novelist, his writings focus on minute inspection of his characters' and narrators' stream of consciousness. His unconventional novels deal with topics such as voyeurism and planned assassination, and they generally de-emphasize narrative in favor of intense character work. Baker's enthusiasts appreciate his ability...more

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Quotes from House of Holes

“Will you dance for me? Let your breasts roam for a moment -- I need to see how they dance.'

'Okay.' She danced, and as she danced, she tried to think of the most delicious salads she could imagine -- with artichokes and sundried tomato and blue cheese dressing, and beets, lots of beets.” — 1 person liked it

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