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House of Leaves

by Mark Z. Danielewski (Goodreads Author)

410 · rating details · 21261 ratings · 3028 reviews

Can a book be a labyrinth? Or, to follow the premise of Mark Z. Danielewski's genre-bending debut, can a book about a book about a film be anything else? House of Leaves is both vast and claustrophobic, crammed with minutiae (footnotes, appendices, poems and letters, and layout trickery) yet cored by a deep, absorbing emptiness, a deliberate void that accommodates, even in...more

Paperback, 709 pages

Published March 7th 2000 by Random House (first published 2000)

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Sep 15, 2008

Mickey rated it

I wish there were someway that a sigh could count as a book review.

House of Leaves is a really, really damn good story. It's about a guy named Johnny Truant who finds a manuscript in a dead man's apartment. Said manuscript is entitled the Navidson Record. It's essentially a dissertation on a documentary of the same name, by and about a man named Will Navidson and his family. Navidson lives in a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, sometimes only a small f...moreI wish there were someway that a sigh could count as a book review.

House of Leaves is a really, really damn good story. It's about a guy named Johnny Truant who finds a manuscript in a dead man's apartment. Said manuscript is entitled the Navidson Record. It's essentially a dissertation on a documentary of the same name, by and about a man named Will Navidson and his family. Navidson lives in a house that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside, sometimes only a small fraction of an inch larger, sometimes miles.
After a quick bit of research Johnny figures out that the Navidson Record, and pretty much everything related to it, does not exist. Johnny becomes obsessed with the whole thing and it drives him crazy.

I think it's a really great story. However, House of Leaves is the perfect definition of bullshit.

You see, it's got an experimental narrative. People will tell you that it's hard to follow, but those are probably the same people who told you that the Matrix required multiple viewings to understand. The book is written by a fictional character named Zampano, he is the dead man I mentioned above in my synopsis of the story. Johnny Truant, who is more or less the books protagonist, chimes in via an introduction and constant foot notations that he's added to Zampano's work. Most of his foot notes however meander off into him rambling about things that have happened to him in his day to day life (mostly fucking a million super hot babes). It should also be noted that the Zampano character has made a retarded amount of foot notes. See, not that complicated.
What really got my goat here is all the goddamn, cutesy little "look how clever I am I"/"I'm a major in art and a minor in lit" bullshit. It starts off simple enough with that kind of stuff. Every time the word "house" comes up the text is blue, no matter what language (and there are several), no matter what. That's a kind of cool little thing, I'm ok with that, but then Danielewski decides that he's going to masturbate from page 119 to page 709. There are annoying text blocking boxes in the middle of about thirty pages that contain text in them that is so clipped and cut off that you can't read it. You have to turn the page sideways and upside down continuously for hundred page stretches at a time, and these pages tend to have a small paragraph at the very best (often times only one or two words), making you flip through the pages very fast. It literally gave me motion sickness. There are footnotes all over the fucking pages making it a big pain in the ass to know what you are supposed to be reading and in what order. Then at the end he has the fucking gall to imply that there are hidden messages encoded throughout the book and you should go back and find them. It is a seriously frustrating book to read.

There is no doubt that House of Leaves is extremely clever, and it's undoubtedly the most exhaustive work of fiction I have ever read. The foot notes alone, which I gather are 98% referencing material that does not really exist, are impressive. Danielewski really worked his ass off on this and it shows. I respect House of Leaves, I cannot stress how much I loved the story, but I pretty much hate the book.

This book looks at you with this smug fucking smile on it's face, daring you to say that you don't like it, knowing that masses of people are going to go along with it because they don't want to look stupid. That's what this is. It's the fucking Radiohead of books. Well, House of Leaves, I am not stupid and I'm calling your bullshit. Fuck you.(less)

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Jun 23, 2007

Jake Thomas rated it

Recommends it for: Ambitious enjoyment-seekers

So there's a definite cult around this book, and I am one of the many who drank the Kool-Aide and never looked back.

Here's a little anecdote that speaks to the possibilities of this book:

I was an RA my junior and senior years of college. One year I had a good friend of mine living in my building, and upon one of her visits to my room I put The House of Leaves in her hand, telling her that she should read it. A couple of days later I was in my room, awake at some unholy h...moreSo there's a definite cult around this book, and I am one of the many who drank the Kool-Aide and never looked back.

Here's a little anecdote that speaks to the possibilities of this book:

I was an RA my junior and senior years of college. One year I had a good friend of mine living in my building, and upon one of her visits to my room I put The House of Leaves in her hand, telling her that she should read it. A couple of days later I was in my room, awake at some unholy hour due to my vampiric sleep schedule, and there's a knock at my door. As an RA this is a rather unsettling experience. On the other side of that door could be a drug overdose, suicide attempt, food poisoning or any other host of problems we're warned about as RAs. So tentatively I open the door and am relieved to find that it is not some horrific medical emergency, but simply my friend. Except my friend looks haggard. Her hair is unkempt, there are bags under her eyes and she is slouched forward, breaking her usually quite nice posture. In her hand is The House of Leaves. We stand there, silently measuring each other up, and then my friend rears back and throws the book at me, then walks away. Such behavior is not terribly unusual for this friend of mine, so I make a note to ask about this later and then go back to bed.

The next day I call up my friend and ask her what exactly was the deal. "I hadn't slept in two days," she said. "That damn book kept me awake. I couldn't finish it, I couldn't sleep with it in the room, I had to get rid of it. That book fucked me up." To this day she still can't bring herself to finish reading the book. And so.

The book has an amazing way of crawling beneath your skin and taking root. When I read it my sleep schedule, already astoundingly bad, became even more irregular and bizarro. I started looking at things differently. The world changed. Not in any big way, but there was a definite shift, and that's the way this book works. It comes at you sideways. People who just see it as a gimmick, in my opinion, are trying to hit the book straight on when you just have to give into it. It's like music, which isn't surprising seeing as how Mark Z. Danielewski's sister is the recording artist Poe, who came up with her album Haunted in tandem with Danielewski's writing of House of Leaves.

There are sections of this book I found so surprising and affecting that I had to put it down and give myself a minute to take in what I'd read and go over it in my mind. Every person I've ever met who has read this book has had something to say about it, something more personal than just "Oh yeah, I liked that," or "It's overhyped." There's a visceral reaction this book can elicit, and I find that fascinating.

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday and she mentioned something David Mamet said once, something along the lines of "When you leave the theater wanting to discuss the play, that's a good play. When you leave the theater wanting to discuss your life and the world, that's art." I like that definition, and I think it applies to House of Leaves. Conversations about this book never stay on the book, they branch out into other areas and interests, they can't help but grow longer and deeper, not entirely unlike a five minute hallway.(less)

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Jul 03, 2010

Aerin rated it

Recommends it for: Anne

Shelves: horror

"If he had seen the termites, he wouldn't have died."

This is a riddle my sister told me when we were kids. She used to bring one or two home from school a day; she got them from her gifted class I think. I was allowed to ask yes-or-no questions to try and figure them out, but this one stumped me. "The termites ate him!" I finally tried. "And if he'd seen them coming, he would have gotten out of there!"

"NO," my sister said, exasperat...more

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Oct 19, 2008

Matt rated it

Recommends it for: fans of metafiction, "house as a character" folks, weirdos

Shelves: 2008

“Thus despite rational objections, technology’s failure is overrun by the onslaught of myth.” – pg. 335

This quote that I have taken completely out of context is probably the best one sentence summary of this book that is possible within the fractured confines of human communication, thus I will resort to the grocery list format.

‘House of Leaves’ is a masterpiece of metafiction, told in “documentary” style. I will attempt to unravel the layers of storytelling here, there a...more

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Oct 19, 2009

Kim rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: the sick and twisted and loving it...

Recommended to Kim by: Michelle, tadpole, Gary

Shelves: contemporary, holy-shit

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Nov 18, 2009

Paul rated it

Recommends it for: post modern horror fans

Shelves: doorstops, novels

It's like one of those very psychedelic albums from the late sixties, where they do all those funny stereo effects, and all that phasing or whatever it was called - all great fun but you still had to have good songs. As you'll know by now, "House of Leaves" has more tricks up its sleeve than you can shake Jacques Derrida at, but not enough tunes. There are two stories. One's about this, you know, uh, what can I say - house. Okay, all right, it's about the story of the book about the fi...moreIt's like one of those very psychedelic albums from the late sixties, where they do all those funny stereo effects, and all that phasing or whatever it was called - all great fun but you still had to have good songs. As you'll know by now, "House of Leaves" has more tricks up its sleeve than you can shake Jacques Derrida at, but not enough tunes. There are two stories. One's about this, you know, uh, what can I say - house. Okay, all right, it's about the story of the book about the film about the house to be precise, but let's not overcomplicate things. The film at the centre of it all is called "The Navidson Record", and so is the book about it. And so is the book about the book about the film - STOP doing that! Hmmm - well, the house story is pretty good - yes, stolen from numerous genre horror movies and books, but not bad, sufficiently interesting, even a little bit creepy. (But come on, by no means edge-of-seat keeps-you-up-all-night, so I have to wonder about the encomium from Brett Easton Ellis - he should get out more. He should meet feminists with a full Black & Decker power tool kit more...)

Now the story of the house is wreathed with hundreds of footnotes - even the footnotes have footnotes, believe me - and I really liked them. They're a kind of deadly straight-faced parody of various kinds of commentators, some scholarly, some not. Very funny stuff, in a solemn, unsmiling way. Many intellectual jokes. Not much knockabout. But so far so good. However, and here's the downside, the footnotes are themselves encrusted with the random autobiographical jottings of the guy who supposedly discovered the bookaboutthefilmaboutthehouse. His writings comprise story number two, the tale of Johnny Truant. And it's dire. It's most strange - I found the events of the spooky house more believable than I did the ludicrous cavortings of Johnny Truant - gratuitous sex, drugs, tattoo parlours, and existential angst by the bucketful. JT is inclined to spout off into pages of incomprehensible rantings at the drop of a tab, and it's just as interesting as someone describing their most brilliant acid trip, which is to say, it's really tiresome. Eventually I gotta say that JT and his pal Lude and his sexual fixations and his loony mother and his fights and his whole depressed, defeated and miserable schtick just serve to capsize what was otherwise an interesting and almost bold satire.

Final note : like the movie 2001 which in the last part goes JUST CRAZZZEEEE so this novel when you get to the heart of the spooky-ookums house horror goes CRAAZZEEEE with all this super-lunatic typography like the pages containing just one sentence or three words written back-to-front, or pages withone sentence going up at a slant (describing our hero surmounting an incline) - I always enjoy this stuff, Alasdair Gray does it in Lanark and Janine 1983 and way back in the 50s Alfred Bester did it in his great sf novel Tiger Tiger - and then there's the photos and poems in foreign languages et etc - so anyway, given all of THAT, this is a 400 page book posing as a 700 page book. Still big, but not as big as you think. Which may just be a neat REVERSE metaphor for the house in House of Leaves itself. Damn!(less)

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Jun 18, 2009

Michelle rated it

Recommends it for: Footnote lovers, Non-linear style lovers, Blair Witch Project lovers

Recommended to Michelle by: Tadpole

Shelves: novels

I’m sitting here trying to review this book, and I’m coming up with nothing. I’ve been thinking about it off and on all day.

At this point I’m tempted to just link to Tadpole’s excellent review and call it a day, but I really feel as though I should say something. After all, I loved this book, and I’ve never read anything like it. It’s a heavily annotated version of a heavily annotated version of a “factual” record about a family who moves into a house in Virginia where something...more

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May 23, 2011

Dan Porter rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: Everyone!

Recommended to Dan by: JSou

Shelves: favorites, horror

I finished House of Leaves last night. A synopsis of the book - if such a thing were actually possible - might go something like this: This is the story of the assembly by one man of the notes of another man written on random bits of paper into a review of a movie - actually a documentary film - and the scholarly research spawned by the film. The film is about a house owned by the photojournalist who created the documentary. Or is it that the house owns him...and his family? Writing a review of ...more

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Mar 31, 2009

Mark rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: someone in the mood for something "different".

Shelves: horror

NOTE: Footnotes are at the end of the review.

"House of Leaves" was my first foray into "post-modern" literature (1). I have to admit that this book "beat" me. I couldn't finish it (2). I was able to finish most of it, though, so I have a good idea of what it was about. I will say that I recommend this book for someone wanting a taste of post-modern literature without having to slog through a dense tome where the action is all internal.

The...more

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Nov 27, 2007

Cloudhidden rated it

Recommends it for: no one

Looking for a spooky book to read around Halloween I was recommended this book by several others on a message board I frequent. Quite a few people mentioned its brilliance and the fear it put in them.

After reading it I could not disagree more.

The story is this: a family moves into a home and begins noticing physical features of their house changing. They begin to investigate, which leads to a new doorway and hall appearing where there was not one. The husband, being...moreLooking for a spooky book to read around Halloween I was recommended this book by several others on a message board I frequent. Quite a few people mentioned its brilliance and the fear it put in them.

After reading it I could not disagree more.

The story is this: a family moves into a home and begins noticing physical features of their house changing. They begin to investigate, which leads to a new doorway and hall appearing where there was not one. The husband, being a world class explorer and filmographer decides to document the new house and in doing so creates a documentary, ala "The Blair Witch Project." But the book has a couple stories within the story. It is written from the point of view of some young slacker who breaks into this dead old man's house and takes the notes for a book the old dude is writing. The book and all of these notes are his reactions to watching the documentary film.

The old man's ramblings reads like a textbook, replete with tons of footnotes, fake references, poems, rantings. But we don't get to just read his reaction, or simply walk through the documentary, we have to suffer through the slacker's constant juvenile side stories and craziness.

The premise is brilliant, and flipping through the book the first time, I was pumped at the prospect of the book. The effort Daniel put into this book is exhausting to say the least. This had to have taken countless hours for the detail to all of the fake references, quotes, drawings, and footnotes, but sadly at the center is a stupid story that goes no where.

I was never scared, but rather annoyed. NOTHING seems to happen. And as soon as the story begins to move, we get a long winded worthless conversation from our main character.

Nothing is ever explained, nor finalized. This is seriously one of the most boring, meandering, monotonous books I have read.

While reading the book I found a message board dedicated to the book and its absolute greatness. It took all I had not to log in and question the taste and objectivity of these people, but if they like it, who am I to pee on them.

I do not recommend this book, but if you do read it and turn out to enjoy it, please enlighten me as to what I missed as I fought falling asleep reading these boring passages. (less)

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Sep 20, 2007

Nathan rated it

Recommends it for: People I hate.

Shelves: books-i-hope-die, fiction

One of the reviews I read of this book compared it positively (bewilderingly) to The Blair Witch Project. I agree, only I thought The Blair Witch project was primarily a ninety-minute gimmick, and not particularly engaging, at that. I should probably admit that I only made it 3/4ths of the way through House of Leaves before realizing that my skull appears larger from the inside than it does from outside. Every person I know who has a brain currently, previously, or aspires to one day have a brai...more

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May 11, 2009

Charlie George rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror, 1001-list, literature

[Spoiler alert: you can't really spoil this story because the dominant theme here is unanswered questions, but I try to distill a number of them, so be warned.]

This book was quite an elaborate mind-fuck. The unique regression of perspectives within perspectives was fascinating, but in the end became tiresome--simultaneously the book's greatest strength and only flaw.

We all know that the written word will always be superior to any other art form because it employs the ima...more[Spoiler alert: you can't really spoil this story because the dominant theme here is unanswered questions, but I try to distill a number of them, so be warned.]

This book was quite an elaborate mind-fuck. The unique regression of perspectives within perspectives was fascinating, but in the end became tiresome--simultaneously the book's greatest strength and only flaw.

We all know that the written word will always be superior to any other art form because it employs the imagination to flesh out the images. And our own imagination is a more personal, authentic, and visceral experience than anything anyone else can produce for us. I've always thought this applied primarily to visuals--characters' appearance, experiences and thoughts, the appearance of monsters, settings, the environment, world-building, etc.

The genius of House of Leaves is that it makes this principle work overtime, and extends it to the meta--to the plot itself, and to the multiple levels of reality. What happened to the two primary authors, Zampano and Johnny Truant? What happened to the whole world of the Navidson Report? We are never told. It's like an alternate reality. So throughout the whole book, my brain was working overtime trying to figure out how the state of affairs came about. We are told early on, and this was brilliant, that none of the interviewees cited had ever heard of the Navidsons, or any related events; that none of the citations (over 400!) could be located, though they are tailored to sound authentic. The "editors" claim they spoke to Mr. Truant only by phone, and have lost contact with him, as though he disappeared.

The simplest possibility is that Zampano made everything up completely. But it is clear from the circumstances of his death and the intriguing experiences of Mr. Truant that is unlikely. But if that is not the case then the alternatives are mind-blowing. How is it that "the world" such as it is, our world, so engrossed in the Navidson documentary in the 1990's has completely forgotten it? Has the house or power within it somehow systematically erased all evidence and memory of the documented events? Were the Navidson's completely snuffed out of existence? What happened to the happy ending presented on the surface? And how did Zampano and Mr. Truant (temporarily) escape the effects of this erasure? There are tantalizing hints about their character which may suggest reasons, but I don't know if it was intentional or just my imagination trying to color in gaps. I guess that means it was subtly intentional. Pretty slick.

But again, none of this is ever revealed. On the one hand it is good that my pet theory doesn't get proven wrong. But on the other hand it is bad that we never find out the truth! Too many mysteries go unsolved! Or is there a truth? Very postmodern.

On top of all this is the final layer, the materialist observation that the actual author, good old Mark Z. Danielewski, really DID make everything up. Not bad, Mark. I was really sucked in at several points, especially early on. I just found the endless footnotes and perspective changes slicing and dicing everything up to be distracting. It was too long and segmented to sustain coherence for me. Don't ask me how it could be done, but if these ideas could have been condensed from 700 pages down to a short story or novella kind of length, a nice respectable 50 or 100 pages, I would assign 5 stars in a heartbeat. Getting rid of all that blank space would be a good start; I don't see what that added, other than weight in my satchel.

And wtf was with Navidson desperately reading "a copy of House of Leaves" while trapped in the labyrinth?? Cool gag, neat trick, but damnit, it is never explained! At least I wasn't perceptive enough to find it or creative enough to figure it out. It's just sitting there happily defying logic, an inversion of the levels of perspective into an impossible paradox, M.C. Escher reincarnated and channeled into the printed word.

Another elephant in the room was the business with the Minotaur, the similarities between the house and the legend. The implication to me, and I'm sure people have very different interpretations, was that Zampano thought this was the house's true origin, but attempted to hide it by blotting it out of his writing. His erasure (and Mr. Truant's uncovering of this information) may have ironically saved it from the House's erasure, and ultimately allowed us to catch this inexplicable, partial remnant of the tale, a leaking of some alternate reality into our universe.

Even more key, unanswered questions: What is with the house's impossible age? Why and how does it cleanse itself of any inanimate objects? Or constantly change shape? What about the ever-present growl? Was that the minotaur? Or the remnants of these on other levels of reality--the claw mark in Zampano's apartment, Mr. Truant sensing the presense? Is the configuration determined by the mind of the occupants? Sometimes or always? Which occupants? The list goes on. When people gush about this book, I suspect this is why. It tricks the mind into making up our own story and explanations as you go along.
(less)

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Jan 12, 2009

Caleb J. rated it

Holy crap, you can tell this was Danielewski's first novel. It is a fantastic experiment in meta-fiction, and I admire it for that reason, but as a narrative (or in this instance, several), it falls severely short.

The Johnny Truant arc feels like a long Palahniuk-style cliche of debauchery. It also illustrated just how arrogant and condescending Dnaielewski is as an author, because Truant frequently tells the reader how s/he should be reacting to the text as well as explaining and i...more

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Jan 08, 2008

Matt rated it

My review was apparently too long, so I'll remove the description of the book. Here it is in brief - you can get a more thorough description from Amazon or elsewhere on the internet:

Johnny acquires a stack of papers written by an old man named Zampano, who recently died. Johnny realizes the mish-mashed pages are a book, and sets out to edit it together. The bulk of "House of Leaves" is the work by Zampano, edited by Johnny. It is an academic exploration/review/critique of...moreMy review was apparently too long, so I'll remove the description of the book. Here it is in brief - you can get a more thorough description from Amazon or elsewhere on the internet:

Johnny acquires a stack of papers written by an old man named Zampano, who recently died. Johnny realizes the mish-mashed pages are a book, and sets out to edit it together. The bulk of "House of Leaves" is the work by Zampano, edited by Johnny. It is an academic exploration/review/critique of a movie called "The Navidson Record" which is a documentary about a family and an odd house that is bigger inside than out. Johnny realizes the movie doesn't exist, and the extensive footnotes by Zampano are largely fake. As he works on the book, Johnny begins to descend into madness (fueled by what?), and chronicles his own story through a series of footnotes that he writes and attaches to Zampano's work. The book is actually two in one - Zampano's pseudo-non-fiction account of a movie, and Johnny's story.

-------------------------

I really enjoyed the Zampano part of the book, the academic report on the Navidson Record. I don't think I've ever read anything like it, where a neat story is told in that manner, through the layer of a critique/summary of critiques of a movie. Really neat idea. The book wasn't as scary as I'd hoped, a friend told me it was really creepy. The first page actually got my hopes up, instead of a dedication, the page just reads "This is not for you."

At points, it is suspenseful, which is a pretty good feat for a book written as a critique of a movie. I really respected and enjoyed that. As I mentioned above, I think it is a really clever way to tell a story.

One cheap gimmick that I liked, and added a bit, was that the text on a page would correspond occassionally to what is being described at the time. For example, at one of the more interesting points a character is crawling through a tiny corridor, which is getting smaller. The text is written in a small block, the next page is the same, but slightly smaller block, The next page smaller still. Cheap gimmick, but it sucked me in.

The Johnny sections I really didn't care for as much, I would actually be disappointed when Zampano's writing was interrupted for a Johnny section, kind of reminded me of "As I Lay Dying" or the George RR Martin books where a good character's section would end and a bad would begin. I just didn't care about his life - he would write about his partying times with Lude, his one-night stands with girls, and how crazy his life had become recently. The only interesting, to me, stuff, were his stories from his past, mainly as a teenager. Good stuff there and there are some connections between his life and the Zampano book.

There are some appendices at the back of the book, some with stuff Zampano hoped to include but never finished, some extra writings found in Zampano's trunk, and some stuff about Johnny. One of them are a collection of letters his mother had written him while she was institutionalized. Gave a good amount of background on Johnny and his life, and they were kind of fun to read, some hidden messages in there (nothing clever). But I think that adding to the book with that sort of stuff was a neat idea.

Overall it was OK, if you're thinking about it, I'd say read it because it's such a different kind of book. Anyone who reads a lot will appreciate it just because of the format and what the book is trying to accomplish in a different way than anything else I've read. The Navidson Record stuff was good, but the Johnny stuff wasn't on that level. I gave it 3 stars, which to me means "I enjoyed it, read it if you're interested, but it certainly isn't a book for everyone."(less)

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Jun 26, 2007

Samara rated it

Recommends it for: trendy fans of semiotics and the Inferno

Shelves: plainolfiction

When I think of this book, I think of a quote from Nabokov--"I want footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers!" In this book, the footnotes do climb up, rather like a noxious vine crawling up a trellis, but they also descend and wrap around your mind like cellophane.

Okay. Fullstop. Let's start again.

This book is a labyrinth. This book is a horror novel. This book is a love story. This book is all-encompassing.

This is the story of Johnny Truant and...more

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Aug 15, 2008

Jamie rated it

House of Leaves is really a weird book. So weird, in fact, that any discussion of it pretty much has to be dominated by its structure. Basically, there are 6 “layers” to the story, each of which the reader is directly or indirectly exposed to:

* Layer 1: Photojournalist Will Navidson and his family move into a new home. To procure content for a documentary he wants to make on the experience, Navidson sets up cameras everywhere a la some reality TV show. He soon discovers that, imp...moreHouse of Leaves is really a weird book. So weird, in fact, that any discussion of it pretty much has to be dominated by its structure. Basically, there are 6 “layers” to the story, each of which the reader is directly or indirectly exposed to:

* Layer 1: Photojournalist Will Navidson and his family move into a new home. To procure content for a documentary he wants to make on the experience, Navidson sets up cameras everywhere a la some reality TV show. He soon discovers that, impossibly, the house is bigger inside than it is outside, and that it contains an entrance into a city-sized --maybe even planet-sized-- labyrinth. The maze is constantly shifting its dimensions and it kind of wears down and eats people who enter it.
* Layer 2: Navidson uses his film footage to make a series of films about the house, the longest of which, The Navidson Accord, becomes a kind of underground Internet and art house sensation.
* Layer 3: An old, blind man named “Zampano” somehow writes an overly academic study of The Navidson Accord documentary, replete with obtuse footnotes and references. It is Zampano’s document that constitutes maybe half of the real-world book that the reader is plodding through.
* Layer 4: A Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee named “Johnny Truant” finds Zampano’s document after the old man dies and begins reading it. Truant starts to go crazy and makes copious footnotes on Zampano, the Navidsons, his dwindling sanity, and his own debaucherous lifestyle. These footnotes comprise roughly the other half of the novel. But it's not like Part I and Part II. Truant's footnotes are literally footnotes -- comments on the text called out by a number and printed at the bottom of the page.
* Layer 5: An ucredited editor makes further notes about all of the above, including Truant’s own footnotes. So you sometimes get the editor’s footnotes on Truant’s footnotes on Zampano’s footnotes on the manuscript about a documentary about a family moving into a crazy house that eats people. But wait, we’re not quite done yet.
* Layer 6: In the new and expanded version of the book that I read, Johnny Truant’s mentally unstable mother adds another level of complexity by writing letters to her son, commenting on and adding a different perspective to many of the things Truant discusses in his footnotes.

Did you get all that in one read-through? If so, you’re a freak. If not, take another look so you can appreciate the complexity of what I’m talking about here. This is one challenging (in a good way) book to get through, what with its demands to keep track of two ping-ponging storylines. Truant’s footnotes would often start right in the middle of one of Zampano’s sentences and go on for several pages about his life of drugs, sex, and sickness before dumping the narrative right back where it was before he interrupted. Zampano’s parts, in harsh contrast to Truant’s, are stuffed with academic language, long passages in German or Latin, and obscure references to essays, books, and other sources.

The other noteworthy thing about The House of Leaves is its typography. This novel really pushes the written word to its limits as a medium by how it uses white space and the orientation of the text to correspond to what’s going on in the story at the time. For example, in one part Zampano is describing an expedition into the gargantuan innards of the house. While he writes about how the endless passageways twist and turn back on one another and constantly shift so as to obliterate any sense of direction, the words on the pages actually change orientation so that they are presented sideways, upside down, or even backwards. In another section that describes an incredibly large open space above the characters’ heads, the pages contain only one line each at the bottom, above which is nothing but empty white space. There's other weird but meaningful stuff, like using blue font for every instance of the word "House" and tying that back to larger meanings. It’s really cool stuff.

You may notice that I’m not saying much about the actual story or characters in the book. That’s because with the possible exception of Will Navidson, there’s not much there to talk about. The story is kind of interesting, but it’s nothing that couldn’t be handled by a short story rather than a 700+ page novel. It’s pretty straight forward and not very complex in terms of plot or character development. It’s also not as scary or thrilling as you might expect from something shelved, as it was for me, in the “Horror” section of the bookstore.

The thing about The House of Leaves, though, is its bizarre structure and its avant-garde typography. Those, along with the sense of mystery that they create, are the main things to appreciate and applaud about this book. I’m not saying that the story isn’t cool or interesting in parts, but it’s not what’s going to get you through this tome. And I do recommend that you do get through it. You’ll probably be glad you did.(less)

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Oct 09, 2007

Katie Bierach rated it

Recommends it for: haunted house visiters

(SCROLL DOWN FOR AN AFTER)

I'm beginning to dabble with the experimental novel--and I say "dabble" because I haven't finished one yet. I started reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, this summer but only got about 130 pages in. Yesterday I got a bit deeper in Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves.

House of Leaves is the kind of book, so far, that when I'm interrupted from reading it, my heart races and I jump of my bed to get the door, conscio...more

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Mar 07, 2008

Mungo rated it

Recommends it for: meh... nobody really... although it was suggested to me by just about everybody.

Contrived and full of gimmicks. A cut and paste job using ideas from Stephen King, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon with a few original ideas scattered amongst the stolen property. Sure, it's pretty and an interesting mix between storytelling and graphic arts, but pretty shapes and colors can't possibly hide a weak sentence:

"As I strain now to see past The Navidson Record , beyond this strange filigree of imperfection, the murmur of Zampanò's thoughts, endlessly searching,...more

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Jan 16, 2008

Greg rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: book fanatics

Shelves: fiction

This is without a doubt one of the most engrossing books I've ever read in my life. I'm almost embarrassed to admit the amount of notes I've scrawled in various notebooks while reading it. You can call this book a horror story, but you can also call it a love story. You might call it the reinvention of the novel, or at the very least it's a book that makes you question your ideas about what a novel could or should be. About where the line is between fact and fiction, author and creation, about i...moreThis is without a doubt one of the most engrossing books I've ever read in my life. I'm almost embarrassed to admit the amount of notes I've scrawled in various notebooks while reading it. You can call this book a horror story, but you can also call it a love story. You might call it the reinvention of the novel, or at the very least it's a book that makes you question your ideas about what a novel could or should be. About where the line is between fact and fiction, author and creation, about investing ourselves in a story we know isn't real.

At it's base, the book is about a family who moves into a new house and decides to document the experience. The family soon finds that the house is larger on the inside than the outside. Without giving away any spoilers, the story slowly descends into darkness from there. The documentary that is created of this experience, called The Navidson Record, is slowly distributed through mostly underground channels and becomes something of a cult phenomena. It plays at film festivals. Essays and books are written about it. Debates ensue about it's meaning and even it's authenticity. And in the book, and old blind man named Zampano attempts to compile and deconstruct everything written about The Navidson Record and create a scholarly work about the entire phenomena. Sadly he dies before he's able to complete his mission. But a young man named Johnny, lost in a world of booze, drugs, and women finds Zampano's unfinished work and attempts to make some semblance of what is thousands of pages of notes written in no coherent order on everything from notebooks to napkins.

The book takes the form of the story of The Navidson Record, written by Zampano, with hundreds of footnotes to the story written by Zampano. Some with just lists of names and publication dates, others with in depth analysis of ideas in The Navidson Record. Above and beyond this, Johnny makes his own footnotes, mostly talking about his life, and yet as expected, the stories slowly begin to intertwine in more and more bizarre ways. Finally there are footnotes from "The Editors" of the book, who without being able to contact Johnny directly have had to make some clarifications here and there. Along with all this there are also appendices in the back with more writings and personal information by the various characters.

If you think that plays with the idea of a novel, you've seen nothing yet. At a couple points throughout the book, the layout of the text changes as well. Written diagonally down the page, around in circles, from a few words to a few sentences on a page, footnotes that force you to skip ahead and then read your way back...This may sound gimmicky(and in a way it is), but how he uses it only serves to enhance the reading experience. In a way the structure of the book itself helps to put you in the mental state of the characters within.

But more than all the surface elements I talked about, this book is an exploration of the human psyche, about characters who are dealing with issues of identity, sorrow, loss, regret, obsession. And those things more than anything about this book is why months after reading it I'll get random flashes from the book and an irresistible urge to pick it up. It haunts you, but in a way that makes you want more.

Read it. If only just for novelty of the reading experience. As an added bonus, those readers who are truly obsessive will undoubtedly realize how much more is going on in this book and spend many a sleepless night trying to solve a riddle with no answer and reach the end of a path only to realize they've been walking in a circle. (less)

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Feb 27, 2008

R. rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 1974-2002

If the inside of your house is bigger than the outside of your house, you might just be a redneck.

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Sep 15, 2007

Alex V. rated it

Recommends it for: smart people with a sense of humor

This book was a pleasure to read. I had a Harry Potter I-am-now-a-Reader reaction to reading it, like I wanted to read it all the time. The book is imbued with obsession from its storyline to its idiosyncratic layout, with words appearing at weird angles, "house" always appearing in blue, multiple story lines going on on the same page, printed in different fonts etc etc... and that obsession was passed on to me as I read it.

Story wise, and structure-wise, I have to say it i...moreThis book was a pleasure to read. I had a Harry Potter I-am-now-a-Reader reaction to reading it, like I wanted to read it all the time. The book is imbued with obsession from its storyline to its idiosyncratic layout, with words appearing at weird angles, "house" always appearing in blue, multiple story lines going on on the same page, printed in different fonts etc etc... and that obsession was passed on to me as I read it.

Story wise, and structure-wise, I have to say it is rather Hollywood manipulative, in the best way. The shifts in narratives creating a Hitchcock tension, waiting for something to happen, while the horrors within the house are depicted with vivid alacrity. At first I found Johnny Truant's narrative as obvious as his name, but they grew on me, and the interplay between him, the narrator he's describing, the people that narrator is describing and the house that they are describing is intoxicating. Its like that TV in Poltergeist; you know you want to stick your hand in there.

My one complaint was the closure that the author forced us into at the ending, but I am willing to accept that this closure was highly ironic, considering the book is physically about a house with no closure, and stylistically is about the endless goose-chase that writing can be. In calculus terms, this book is the limit as x approaches "meta" without reaching implosion.

The mock-academic action, all those footnotes and cross-referencing, was one of my favorite parts, presenting the idea that all these conferences and books and symposia were all dedicated to this cast of semi-interesting characters and that the physical abberation that was the house is reduced to fodder for hackneyed self-referential analysis on the part of all these experts. I suspect Danielewski has done some time in a Comparative Lit grad program and has the scars to prove it.

House of Leaves is a complex yet imminently readable, intellectual, fun thriller, and a triumph of cleverness in dull, dry times where people peck like birds at the facts, seeming to have lost their taste for a good story.(less)

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Sep 04, 2008

Dan rated it

Recommended to Dan by: Britni, my friend

Hey, I finally finished this book. This story, by far was the most difficult for me to read; why? I painsakenly struggled through all of the different fonts, words in squares, used a mirror for the reversed words, and tried to find a story within.
I found the story throughout all the fuss. Was it worth it? Well maybe not a whole lot, but I do admire the courage it took to write this mess.
I know this is a very scary story about a house... and I'll stop right there, because you...more

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Oct 23, 2009

JSou rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 1001, spooky, favo-u-rites, owned

I finished this last night. At about 1:30 in the morning. Honestly, I have no idea how to even begin a review for this book. I kind of have the same panicky feeling I had when people would see me reading and ask what this book was about. I started blurting out incomplete sentences and even stammering all the while. I knew there was no way I could convey the brilliance of this book in just a couple light-conversational sentences. I think that might be the same case here, so my apologies in a...more

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Apr 14, 2009

Fuzzy rated it

I was pushing through the last few pages of House of Leaves at lunch and a coworker saw one of the distinctly typographically "interesting" pages open in front me. "Are you reading House of Leaves? I loved that book." "Well," I said, "frankly I'm hating it." "Hating how compelling it is?" "No, just plain hate-hating it."

The weird thing is that I should love it. I love multiple layers. I love footnotes. I love codes. I love n...more

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Oct 16, 2008

J.S. rated it

More than anything, House of Leaves is pretentious. It does things against the grain just because they haven't been done before, not because they're necessarily good ideas. The book seems to take pride in trying its damnedest to give you a headache, and then expects you to like it (unless Danielewski is a sociopath, and wants people to suffer while reading this, in which case I've misinterpreted).

House of Leaves gives off the impression of a modern art experiment, daring you to say i...moreMore than anything, House of Leaves is pretentious. It does things against the grain just because they haven't been done before, not because they're necessarily good ideas. The book seems to take pride in trying its damnedest to give you a headache, and then expects you to like it (unless Danielewski is a sociopath, and wants people to suffer while reading this, in which case I've misinterpreted).

House of Leaves gives off the impression of a modern art experiment, daring you to say it's pointless even as it flips the sentences sideways and has one word per page for a whole paragraph. Not to mention the convoluted narrative, which can be described in more detail by someone who liked the book. However, I will say this: it's interesting to note how I stopped caring about the core of the story as soon as its sorta-narrator explains that it never happened (which he does right in the beginning, so this isn't a spoiler). Even though I know it didn't happen, because it's fiction, I became apathetic about the story of a family moving into a house with impossible interior dimensions because even the other characters in the book said it wasn't real. I don't know if that counts for or against House of Leaves, since it tells me something about the way I read books on the one hand, and it also invalidated most of the plot on the other.

One of the three sorta-narrators uses an absurd amount of foreign languages and obscure quotes (also possibly fake) to drag the story down even further, and to top it off, there's the first guy who frequently interrupts with random stories about his sex life. Maybe Danielewski wants us to envy the tattoo artist that lives like a rock star, or maybe he wants to convince us that he's not a square by breaking up all the academic nonsense that makes up about half the book, but either way it feels forced and unnecessary. By the way, as far as I can tell, there's no explanation for why this fake story of a Twilight Zone house is driving the tattoo artist, Johnny, slowly insane. Admittedly, I didn't finish the book, but I haven't found an explanation elsewhere, and it's probably another one of those things that the author left so deliberately obtuse that scholars and intellectuals can argue about it for the rest of time.

If that sounds like fun to you, then get the book, by all means. For me, all of Danielewski's attempts at being different and artsy were just irritating. When I get a book, I want to read it, not juggle it around because the sideways words are supposed to represent the characters walking up the walls or something. By the way, did you notice how I underlined house and bolded book every time in this review? I'm not going to tell you why - hell, I don't even know myself - but there's bound to be someone out there who thinks it's a deep artistic message. It worked in House of Leaves.(less)

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Kyle Spears Actually there is a rhyme and reason for all the things you so quickly dismiss as 'artsy' and pretentious. It's all about what frame of mind you're in...more
updated 07. September, 08:31 Uhr

J.S. That's interesting about the blue screen thing, but having a deeply hidden and obscure purpose doesn't necessarily make the book any less pretentious....more
07. September, 22:08 Uhr

Katie I hate when people put smiley faces after disagreeing with someone.
12. Juli, 00:17 Uhr

Aug 15, 2008

Sarah rated it

Recommends it for: mark danielewski

this book is bigger on the outside than it is on the inside.
too much style, too little substance. the story of the house lured me in and propelled me through to the conclusion but most of the book was filler. the excessive footnotes were distracting and annoying and added little or nothing at all to the story. as i was having to turn the book upside down and sideways and very nearly bending over backwards to read some pages, i pictured danielewski grinning with delight at the headache a...more

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May 20, 2008

Taka rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: japan_jul07-aug10, post-modern_lit, 1-fiction-you-must-read

Amazing--

Once in a while out of the blue, someone comes up with a work of art incredibly original and mind-blowing, and one can only pray that he or she is lucky enough to encounter it. Well, here it is. A book devilishly conceived and beautifully crafted, written in its own polyphonous and cacophonous language, telling a captivating horror story about a strange house. The unusual layout of the book makes a portion of it a real labyrinth, making your eyes wander over those pages in s...moreAmazing--

Once in a while out of the blue, someone comes up with a work of art incredibly original and mind-blowing, and one can only pray that he or she is lucky enough to encounter it. Well, here it is. A book devilishly conceived and beautifully crafted, written in its own polyphonous and cacophonous language, telling a captivating horror story about a strange house. The unusual layout of the book makes a portion of it a real labyrinth, making your eyes wander over those pages in search of the right footnote to a footnote to a footnote. In other words, MZD realizes for the first time Ts'ui Pen's labyrinth in Borge's "The Garden of Forking Path," something I thought was an impossibility.

Though Johnny Truant's penchant for interminable run-on sentences and some of the stuff in the appendices (esp. Pelican Poems) irked me at times, the writing is gorgeous and the story is masterfully told. The layout, or what some people may call 'a mere gimmick,' is not only strange and cool and beautiful, but has a point (!). I'm a proponent of Modernism and experimental fiction insofar as the bizarre, non-conventional aspects of the novel have some kind of purpose. Here, they do, and I'm quite impressed by MZD's knack of bringing together all those different styles and unusual layouts into one coherent and captivating piece.

Unlike other postmodern writers (e.g. DFW, Nabokov, Chabon), MZD won't avalanche you with obscure words. There are some here and there, but it's definitely not a postmodern vocab avalanche. It's eminently readable and HIGHLY engaging. I think in House of Leaves, you find the rare mix of story-telling, postmodern playfulness, and modernistic innovations.

Although the book looks long and intimidating, it actually isn't. Flipping through the pages at random, you'll notice that many pages have only a few sentences or even no word at all. In fact, it took me less than a week to finish it.

Some reviewers have pretty strong sentiments about this book, calling it, to quote one such reviewer, "bullshit" and giving vent on the book's unusual layout where one has to turn the book around to read the sentences. The reviewer goes on to add, rather cryptically, that s/he is not stupid and hence calling it bullshit. I simply do not get it. The layout, if it was without meaning or purpose, is "masturbation" or just "bullshit" where the author tries hard to impress or be artsy for the sake of being artsy. I don't think he's trying to be pretentious at all (rather, I think he's being overly pretentious to make fun of literary criticism). Nor do I think that he's being artsy for the sake of being artsy because I think the artsiness has a purpose: to visually represent the experience of the characters. Whether he does it successfully in all instances is up for debate; the important point is rather that it's a means to an end. The age-old maxim still applies here: if it doesn't contribute to the story, cut it. But because the whole artsy layout does contribute to the story, stet - let it stay. Don't hate the book just because it's not normal and tries to do something new.

Overall, it's got everything you'd expect in a great book. It's funny, sad, perplexing, surreal, playful, beautiful, and fun. Recommended for anyone who wants to experience a work of genius.

Inspiring.

(less)

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Sep 01, 2007

Nate Dean rated it

It is difficult to review this house of leaves, mainly because it attempts to betray every convention in the writing world, and as such becomes suspect on first glance. It is the ultimate experiment in book-art, taking the words on the page and literally painting them in circles, descending the writing in columns through 20 pages, and then reascending the column on the other side, back up those 20 pages. At first it's nothing but a good gimmick; However the deeper you get into the story (es...more It is difficult to review this house of leaves, mainly because it attempts to betray every convention in the writing world, and as such becomes suspect on first glance. It is the ultimate experiment in book-art, taking the words on the page and literally painting them in circles, descending the writing in columns through 20 pages, and then reascending the column on the other side, back up those 20 pages. At first it's nothing but a good gimmick; However the deeper you get into the story (essentially about a house that's "bigger" on the inside than it is on the outside) Danielewski really weaves his characters in a labyrinthine manner, with the perspective of Johnny Truant who only gets tangentially associated with the house and is deeply affected by it. It is really a story about a labyrinth, and thus the writing style is pertinent and appropriate. This is a book you explore more than you read.

That being said, there are parts to the book that keep it out of of 5-star territory. Sometimes Danielewski goes over-the-top with the flowery prose. Several elements of the story are kept in like dead-ends to this maze of words, which would otherwise be rightfully edited out as unnecessary elements. Many of the characters in this novel are dead-ends in and of themselves: the Navidson family is a mess, Johnny and Zampano are loners, and even the ancillary characters are all exuding a vibe of "I don't belong here".

In fact, I do believe that the overall story really suffers from this myopic and ultimately loner vision, regardless of how brilliant. If I remember correctly, when the author brought the book in to be published he gave explicit instructions as to how to render each page, down to the point that he directed much of the typefacing of each page at a computer right there in the publisher's office. I can only imagine the intimidation an editor must feel when a project like this comes along, with very little leeway to present different avenues, because there is a pressure to keep the author's essence. I seriously wonder what kind of a relationship the author and editor had. If not for this emptiness, regardless of how much of it was intended, I would have rated it 5 stars.

Regardless of my critique, do read this book. It is so important of a novel and it is the direction of narrative to come. It probably won't be your favorite, but it will be one of your most memorable.(less)

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Jan 26, 2009

Lara rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: own, something-wicked, 2008, very-favorites, before-you-die-1001

I read this book in one day because I was physically incapable of putting it down. I was too busy turning it every which way, flipping back and forth between its labyrinthine pages, completely absorbed in its every level. It has crept its way into my head in ways I never thought possible. I turned my bedside lamp on and off several times last night, checking to make sure the room was still as I'd remembered it, wondering if I should go and get the book and look for more answers, or if I should ...more

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Jun 12, 2007

Brooke rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who like creepy house stories

Shelves: own, horror

In short, House of Leaves is about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

A bit of a longer synopsis: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript. The manuscript is an academic article about a documentary. This documentary was created by Will Navidson, who discovers that his house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside and decides to explore the strangeness and videotape it as he goes. The academic manuscript about the movie was written by Zampanò, who is blind...moreIn short, House of Leaves is about a house that's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

A bit of a longer synopsis: Johnny Truant finds a manuscript. The manuscript is an academic article about a documentary. This documentary was created by Will Navidson, who discovers that his house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside and decides to explore the strangeness and videotape it as he goes. The academic manuscript about the movie was written by Zampanò, who is blind. Will Navidson's story is told within Johnny's story as the manuscript begins to affect Johnny's life.

House of Leaves is unsettling, disorienting, and terrifying. These words describe not only the plot, but the way the book is presented. On many pages, words go up and down the page. Some parts are printed backwards. The formatting of the text often corresponds with the action going on in the words. There are small chunks where there are only a few words on each page, which, when paired with what the words actually say, creates a strong sense of foreboding. The plot definitely would not have impacted me as much as it did if it was presented in the standard format.

Since the manuscript is a scholarly article about the documentary, Zampanò's parts of the book read like one, with copious footnotes and analysis. Johnny's text reads more like fiction as he describes finding and reading the manuscript. Despite the academia and weaving between fiction and "non-fiction," House of Leaves never loses its rhythm. The academic tone also does not cut into the terror of the narrative; there were times when I had to put the book down, turn on the lights and television, and walk around while breathing deeply in order to shake off the creepiness. To this day, two years after I first read it, I still get chills while thinking about certain scenes.

The fun doesn't stop when you turn the book's final page. The author's sister, Ann Danielewski, better known as Poe, wrote her rather spectacular album Haunted to tie into the book (sample lyrics: Johnny dear don't be afraid / I will keep your secrets safe / Bring me to the blind man who / Lost you in his house of blue). Haunted carries some of the book's creepiness with it by including voice recordings of the siblings' father that they discovered after he passed away.

I really can't convey just what an Experience reading House of Leaves is. Some might find the footnotes and scholarly tone too cumbersome, but you owe it to yourself to give it a chance. And if a door suddenly appears in your house where there wasn't one before, for God's sake, get the hell out of there.(less)

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About Mark Z. Danielewski

Mark Z. Danielewski is an American author. He is the son of Polish avant-garde film director Tad Danielewski and the brother of singer and songwriter Annie Decatur Danielewski, a.k.a. Poe.

Danielewski studied English Literature at Yale. He then decided to move to Berkeley, California, where he took a summer program in Latin at the University of California, Berkeley. He also spent time i...more

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Quotes from House of Leaves

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.” — 414 people liked it

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.” — 180 people liked it

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