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Loading... House of Leaves: The Remastered Full-Color Edition (original 2000; edition 2000)by Mark Z. Danielewski (Author)
Work InformationHouse of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)
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I think of this less of a novel and more of art. It's not an easy read, but it was a faster read than I expected (this may be in part that some pages only have a few words or a paragraph on them). Still - it's not easy to describe. This is a book that will stay with you, which is both positive and negative (you'll understand once you read it).
House of leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski runs to 710 pages: 13 pages of introduction, 535 of text, followed by three appendices and a 42-page, triple-column index. ... let me say right off that his book is funny, moving, sexy, beautifully told, an elaborate engagement with the shape and meaning of narrative. For all its modernist maneuvers, postmodernist airs and post-postmodernist critical parodies, ''House of Leaves'' is, when you get down to it, an adventure story: a man starts traveling inside a house that keeps getting larger from within, even as its outside dimensions remain the same. He is entering deep space through the closet door. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
A young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility--until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story: one of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams. House of Leaves influenced, and was influenced by, the music of POE, Mark Z. Danielewski's sister. Her album Haunted includes many songs inspired by House of Leaves. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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This is a tough book to review without breaking it into parts. Johnny Truant tells us his story of reading the Navidson report as written by an old man called Zampano. I found Truant’s sections irritating, constantly going off on tangents and telling a story seemingly unrelated to the notebook he’s reading, especially his gratuitous sexual encounters; although at one point I wondered if these were as imaginary as some of his hallucinations of personal peril. However, Navidson’s story as ‘written’ by the character of Zampano grabbed my attention but alas, made me want to read those sections without the interference of the rest.
Then there are the annotations, again many of which seem to tell the reader nothing. At best, they lend a kind of authenticity to Zampano’s note taking, but are almost entirely unnecessary. The experimental style of the book is mildly interesting, but all this extraneous information is taxing and makes the book drag. Early in the ‘report’, Zampano includes almost two pages of names, which turn out to be (according to a footnote) names of photographers. I didn’t bother reading through an entire list of names, which were there for no apparent reason I could see. The references to echoes and labyrinths seem somehow to refer to the novel itself. As does the sentence ‘All solutions are necessarily personal’ (page 115) appearing to suggest the outcome of the story (good or bad) will be unique to the individual.
In another, the author notes a real or fictional article (I don’t know which) remarking ‘In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news pictures more as illustrations than as reportage…’ referring to the inability eventually to distinguish between genuine images and those manipulated. But in this, and references to other technology, once again the writer seems to manipulate the reader, telling us we can trust nothing.
And what is the point of the boxes of text or blank pages, other than to suggest the maze of corridors and wide open spaces within the supernatural realms of the ‘house’ investigated in the Navidson report? Likewise, later, lines the reader needs to read in the opposite direction, or from a corner, etc., appear to be representations of Navidson’s exploration.
Whilst reading I couldn’t help thinking that so many reviewers told others not to bother, and yet, the book remains acclaimed. On the one hand, the author has written something incredible when one considers the work of putting all the content together — that of Zampano’s notebook and Truant’s experiences while reading said book — with all the annotations. It must have been a pain to organise and to print, especially when first published. But has the author, in actuality, written something ultimately pretentious with little substance, leaving readers floundering around trying to find personal meaning in a literary labyrinth? In that regard, the book almost reads like a joke played on everyone who gets lost in its pages.
Or does the book attempt to work like the maze Navidson explores? Psychological references try to explain the true meaning of Navidson’s claims, treating these details as the maze of Navidson’s mind. I enjoyed reading the Navidson house storyline, and there was a touch of creepiness in the odd place, but anyone looking for a horror story may be hard-pressed to find it here. Truant’s descent into madness seems insubstantial, although the conclusion of the book, when we learn more about his mother from her own written word, left me questioning if he was always so inclined to a breakdown. Ultimately, I understand the love/loathe reactions. This book will mean different things to different people — lots to some, nothing to others. This has to be one of the most peculiar books I’ve read. ( )