House of Leaves
Ratings408
Average rating4.1
First off, I didn't find anything in this book scary. So if you are expecting a traditional horror novel, you will be disappointed. I wasn't expecting that and mostly enjoyed it. I liked the academic aspects of it. It definitely made me think about how the author was writing the book. Some of Johnny's parts were good and some were over the top. I was left wondering how much was real and how much he imagined. I guess that was the point. But like in Javier Maria's novel A Heart So White there was too much wondering about real and fake. I don't hate the wondering, but a little part of me wanted proof. I enjoyed it. If you read it as a mental exercise, you will probably enjoy It. If you don't want a mental exercise, don't read it.
First. The rating for Uniqueness is 5/5, Enjoyment 1/5, and overall a 3/5. The Summary also is not in my opinion entirely correct and is an unreliable narration much like the commentary by Johnny Truant himself in the novel. The summary provided is a half-truth at best.
So I will provide my summary of the book here to provide a better context of the journey you would have to undertake to read the book.
This book is the Blair Witch Project of Novels. It is put together by the main character/commentator/first editor of the project Johnny Truant that “finds” or rather is pointed to a trunk filled with notes, pages, and commentary on a movie that doesn't exist put together by a man that is found dead in his shut-in apartment. This starts Johnny down a rabbit hole of compiling, sorting, and trying to verify the work he has inherited (so to speak). The Movie in question, which is analyzed and commentated on in an academic style, is one that no one can agree on is real or fake about the House that is bigger on the inside. Here is where the other summary enters on an American Family trying to adapt to rural living that stumbles into a riddle, a changing house. Of course, the movie doesn't exist to Johnny's knowledge. Nonetheless, we are taken through the journey of Johnny as he puts together the papers and tries to form the book as we read through pages of academic critique, Johnny's musings, and struggles, and step by step breakdowns of the Movie. And we start to see what this Movie, this House, does to people that look too close.
Now at least you have a better idea of what the story is. It is a fragmented story of multiple people, thrown together like a college thesis. A college thesis plus a journal of the drunk student writing the paper.
I don't love this book like I thought I would but I don't hate it either. I'd never read it again though.
As others say it is not an easy read. Though a pro tip after trying and failing many times over the last 12 years to read the damn thing, the ebook proved to save me. The ebook does away with a lot of the annoying mirror pages and upside-down text. Though you'll still have one or few word pages to flip through.
It didn't meet my expectations of a Haunted House or even a Horror novel though plenty is terrifying about the book. And you do have to become a bit obsessed to finish the damn thing. Turning page after page hoping some clarity is found on the next, never really getting that satisfaction either.
Mark Danielewski is a good writer, a strong creator of prose, which he very purposely chooses to suck at in certain places, knowingly enhancing the unnerving sensation in those portions. Everything in this book seems like an artistic choice. An Art project to be sure.
“For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You'll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly, shifts in you. Worse, you'll realize it's always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won't understand why or how.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
But the real question is, is it worth the read? Worth the trudging through unnecessary pages on the science of Echos? Yes and no. It is worth it to read an experimental styled book, that is creative to the Nth degree. And it's a cult classic, so are you a “true” horror fan if you haven't? It's not worth it for everyone is what I'd say and if you are good at skimming that will help you a lot as the Echo pages did not add anything to the story!
The bit that I do enjoy is for one a better understanding of something that has inspired a lot of other fiction works and projects. And if you enjoy the metaphor digging and between the lines analyzation of literary works you can have a field day at what Mark was trying to convey with this convoluted Debut. I believe it is an amazing and weird commentary to be sure, one that leaves you wanting like most true mysteries in life.
I do believe that this book would have been stronger if a lot of the weird fat had been cut and more meat had been added to the main stories. But it wouldn't be House of Leaves if they had done that.
If you can persevere through the jumbled made up scholars discussing sound acoustics and other impertinent information I think it's worth the struggle if for no other reason to say you did it.
And if you enjoy the book or just like the idea and can't make it through the book. Check out the Podcast Tanis. Which in my opinion takes the best ideas and vibes of House and Leaves and makes it enjoyable. It is its own story but there are key elements that are very familiar.
Happy hunting, good luck, and don't lose your mind trying to find sense in these pages.
3.5 Rounded to a 3
There is a house...a seemingly normal house. A house that suddenly has a new closet...walls that don't match in length from the inside to the out...and a hallway that appears out of thin air. So of course what happens? People go into the hallway... get lost, get found, disappear for days on end, and just can't let go. What happens when they are lost in there? What do they see?
A film begins circulating that glimpses into the unknown hallway known as The Navidson Record. Johnny Truant discovers a manuscript written by a recently deceased man named Zampano, that is a study on said film. So begins the madness as Johnny tries to piece together the notes and pages of what Zampano has left behind.
I really wanted to love this one more. It started off grabbing my interest and sucking me in immediately. However, trying to read through the many, many pages of footnotes (that are chapters on their own), and the haphazardly thrown together clips and pieces within a page (that are meant to be that way) I quickly became irritated.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea and the thought put into this book. It just didn't thrill me to have to turn the book upside-down, sideways, caddy corner, and all manor of 360° reading. Not to mention having to read paragraphs backwards.
That being said, the story itself was right up my alley. What horror fan doesn't love a house that mysteriously has closets and hallways appear out of nowhere...where items disappear, walls move, and growls are floating around but can't be pin pointed? I know some will love this type of book and initially I was into it but 400pgs later and it's a bit cumbersome and annoying and took away my enjoyment of the story.
Some people will self-combust over how brilliant they think this book is. For me, while I really enjoyed some bits, I found too much of it really really annoying. It's not bad, just not the life changing experience that some people say it is.
Navidson report 5/5
Ramblings of Johnny Truant 3/5
Whalestone letters 3/5
Footnotes 2/5
Format of book 1/5
When I picked up this book, I didn't know what I was getting into. I was intrigued by the description and a few of the reviews so I went ahead and read it. For those who want to know whether or not they will like this book:
- It is experimentally told, and a lot of the writing reads like a textbook.
- You have to read the footnotes and the appendixes or it is not worth it.
- None of it is true. Not even within the book itself.
- It's “meta”
- It is smart and knows that it is smart. It dares you to have any opinion of it at all. It dares you to try to understand. If that bothers you (which apparently it does for some people), then don't bother.
- It doesn't end with a tied bow and you will realize right away that there is no way that it could.
I won't say that I liked this book. I won't say that I disliked this book. I will say that I enjoyed reading it, if nothing else because it is unbelievably clever. I enjoyed how it toyed around with my mind. I enjoyed the brash contrast between static academic writing and heart-rending poetry. I laughed at myself as I flipped to the appendixes, balancing multiple book marks, as my arms got tired from holding it up and flipping back and forth. Sometimes I thought it could not possibly go anywhere, other times just one line or footnote struck me and I had to pause to think and feel before continuing on. I honestly liked how foolish I felt reading it and how foolish I felt trying to understand it, and even how foolish I feel trying to understand the end now.
The poem the title comes from does a better job of summing up the book than any review:
“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind.”
This was unlike anything I've ever read. For that it gets 5 stars. Not sure I completely comprehend what happened.
If you like “Stranger Things” and a shitload of literary references this is for you. Don't read the synopsis it's better to have everything come as a surprise.
idk some man told me it was his favorite book and i thought i liked him but then i read it and wasn't so sure anymore
God this book is fascinating and beautiful, and there is more than one scene that turned my stomach or put my jaw on the floor. It has its own atmosphere and ambience that is so unique to just this book, that I can't think of anything to which I can compare it. Even if I could, I wouldn't want to. If it helps any, the first time I heard of this book was when I went to google and searched for “books that feel like the Silent Hill series.”
I finished the book last night but it's still on my mind this morning because I can't find the words to... summarise? Explain? Express how I feel?
It's a helluva book. Some parts were difficult to read because of how experimental it is, but I'm glad I powered through. There are beautiful quotes dotted throughout the book, and the story is hauntingly beautiful.
I've yet to come to my own conclusion about what the message behind the book is, but I have a feeling it will come to me in a slow, unsuspecting method and will blow my mind again.
Please read this book. But then again, please don't read this book.
Update from my 2nd reading:
A kind friend gifted me the hardcover version of this book. It was a sublime experience - to be able to hold the narrative in your hands, flip through the insanity and come out of the house with a greater understanding of human beings.
Original note:
This is probably the strangest book I've ever read. One of those cult favourites where you'll either passionately love the book, or vehemently hate it. Everything depends upon how much are you willing to invest - when you have to read the words upside down or sometimes vertically, when there are pages after pages after pages of incomprehensible texts, when you lose control of story at every step of the way and wonder what's really happening, are the characters losing their minds or is it you - you have to remember that this is just a book. Nothing more, nothing less. Otherwise, you'll end up like me, obsessing over every tiny detail, wondering at midnight whether the emptiness and coldness you feel is just because the temperature is low or are there other factors in play.
I know. I sound paranoid. But this is exactly what the author intended.
On surface, House of Leaves is a book about a house which expands on the inside while remaining unchanged on the outside, the vast empty space consisting of nothing but darkness accompanied by a vicious and nerve-wrecking growl. But it is so much more than that. This is the story of a famous photojournalist who is retiring from his life to fix his broken marriage in a quiet, suburb place. What he gets instead is a haunted house which initially intrigues his interest, but later on consumes him completely with its idiosyncrasies. How the paranoia creeps into his wife and his friends, threatening to break their entire relations. Eventually, it becomes a tale of how love redeems him and brings them closer than ever. All this sounds like a normal story, except the way Mark presents it makes it special. You find footnotes to footnotes of a book inside the book, with narrator consistently interrupting the flow with his own, fucked up life, slowly spiralling out of control from reality.
I'm glad I picked it up. The only letdown was that I read it on kindle, ‘cause I couldn't afford the paperback version at this time. But, this is a book that is meant to be read on paper. I will surely revisit it once I have the paperback in my collection.
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This is also available on my website
phenomenal book. this is impossible to compare to any other piece of contemporary literature.
This a very different kind of book that plays with all your expectations of narrative structure. I was initially daunted by the length of the novel and wondered how long I would take to complete it. However once I began I found myself reading at a much faster pace than I thought I would. It's a gripping experience that is written from multiple perspectives but not necessarily divided by chapters, but often times within the same page itself. Overall an extremely well produced book with major props to the physical quality of the book too.
One of the most fantastically complex books I've ever read, recursive and expansive in scope, both playing fantastically with wordplay and whitespace while remaining inside perfectly structured grammar. Though a simple horror-story is at its heart, it is layered in theme and emotion that makes it a deeply engrossing read. Would recommend to anyone who is a fan of the unusual, the obtuse, and the deeply affecting.
The literary equivalent of a ‘found footage' horror film (like The Blair Witch project or Cannibal Holocaust), House of Leaves is spooky and inventive and probably my favourite book I've read all year. Its experiments in formalism are clever and complement the story perfectly, helping you engage with the story in a unique way.
I can't recommend it enough. Just terrific.
20 000 characters are not enough to describe this book, haha.
Just experience it for yourself. Be sure to pull through even if it distracts you. It's a book you will remember for years.
It'd be interesting to see what this book would look like if someone were to take the Navidson parts and put them together in the fashion of a regular narrative. I think it would hold up well, if not be even better than the disjointed, experimental, Pale Fire-meets-DFW style of the novel. While there are portions of the book that are totally engaging (like some of Truant's stories or when the explorers first enter the mystery room/corridor), the structure of the book (by which I mean the way the story is actually printed on the page) breaks up the story to a point where the novel gets really annoying, especially the pages only partially printed or printed at strange angles.
It'd be interesting to see what this book would look like if someone were to take the Navidson parts and put them together in the fashion of a regular narrative. I think it would hold up well, if not be even better than the disjointed, experimental, Pale Fire-meets-DFW style of the novel. While there are portions of the book that are totally engaging (like some of Truant's stories or when the explorers first enter the mystery room/corridor), the structure of the book (by which I mean the way the story is actually printed on the page) breaks up the story to a point where the novel gets really annoying, especially the pages only partially printed or printed at strange angles.
Terrifying and mind-blowing. Fascinating characters keep increasingly absurd situations somehow completely relatable. On one level it's simply a story about a family and an architecturally “unique” house but on another level it's an insane mind game. I think I have like 15 pages of notes just trying to piece everything together. And even if it's impossible to tie every string together and catch every unspoken story and find every underlying connection, the surface story is fascinating enough on it's own. It isn't really a book you read so much as participate in.
I almost walked away from this book after the first hundred pages. Describing it as pretentious is akin to calling the Atlantic Ocean slightly damp. It's self-indulgent, painfully clever, and unrelentingly experimental – enough to make you wish he'd stop experimenting for a second and just tell a freaking story. It's so full of post-modern wankery that you wonder what you, as a reader, have to do with it at all: one gets the impression the author expects readers to sort of admire it from afar instead of actually attempting to read it.
It has its oddly compelling moments, but on the whole it's about as exciting as reading a textbook for a post-modern film crit class. The author expects a LOT of effort on the part of the reader, while consistently failing to provide much of a return on that investment.
That having been said, I have to admit that by the time I finished the book, I had developed a grudging respect for it. While I would describe the work as a whole as kind of brilliant, I can't exactly say that I enjoyed reading it or, in good conscience, would recommend it. It's definitely... unique.
The book was intriguing, but ultimately was too complicated to deal with... The plethora of subtitles, Latin sidebars, and sideways text was a little too much. Not to mention the book was physically heavy and clumsy (even in paperback) to the point of being uncomfortable to support in my supine position (I do most of my reading on the way to sleep).
The musician Poe put out a CD called Haunted that takes it's inspiration from the book. It was interesting to listen to the CD after reading a bit of the book.
In the end, I'll keep the CD, but the book will remain unfinished.