House of Leaves in Metafilter

Jul 11, 2013 Jennifer Stephens rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Finished House of Leaves. Gah, I want the hours back that I gave to reading this. I read novels to be pulled into a story, to be entertained or emotionally stimulated. Inherent in this pleasure is a tidy ending where everything is explained, mysteries unraveled, etc. But HoL creates so many questions that it doesn't answer. I absolutely hate books like that. Don't tell me half a story and then ask me to imagine my own ending. I want to know what really happened (within the context of the novel a ...more

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Nov 26, 2014 Ohenrypacey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lit

There is no doubt that House of Leaves is a challenge to the reader. The narrative is unconventional: three threads take place simultaneously on the page -- the 'story', a gothic haunted house inhabited by a celebrity couple who document their experience there as an underground film, in the spirit of the Blair Witch Project; Notes, the annotations of the film, called the Navidson Record, created by a mysterious blind man named Zampano who dies at the opening of the book; and notes on the notes, There is no doubt that House of Leaves is a challenge to the reader. The narrative is unconventional: three threads take place simultaneously on the page -- the 'story', a gothic haunted house inhabited by a celebrity couple who document their experience there as an underground film, in the spirit of the Blair Witch Project; Notes, the annotations of the film, called the Navidson Record, created by a mysterious blind man named Zampano who dies at the opening of the book; and notes on the notes, a rambling diary by Johhny Truant, inheritor of the vast collection of ephemera collected by Zampano as he researched the history of the house and the film.
I am not a reader of the horror genre. I recognize some of the more obvious tropes, and was generally entertained by the pace, suspense and creepiness of the House (every single time the word house appears in the book it is in blue ink) and the story of Navidson's exploration of it. Zampano's death is also related to the haunting of the house, but is less satisfactorily explained. (view spoiler)
In the end, the book takes the form of a document, and the reader is asked to believe that the document itself is a part of the unbroken chain of the haunting, akin to the vhs tape in 'The Ring". While I bought into the idea of it all, and was generally entertained by the reading, I was never chilled by the horror, nor maddened by the experience, other than being a bit exhausted by trying to believe that Mr Truant, as his life unraveled, actually took the time to write all of the rantings that make up at least a third of the book.
An ambitious project, reminiscent, at its best, of Eco and the meta levels he uses to effectively explore the nature of storytelling. ...more

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