House of Leaves
 

Written by Mark Z. Danielewski, this book looks into the lives of a family who has just recently moved into a new house. after opening one of the doors, the father finds out that this room is totally of this world. a second story moves throughout the book about a receptionist at a tattoo parlour who is researching what evidence has been left behind in a recent dead old man's apt. the evidence and notes tells a story about a family in a house that has a room which takes whoever enters it to another dimension.

The book is extrememly graphic and visual. I can highly recomend this book for anyone who likes, horror, mysteries and books that are just plain super out there.

Have heard good things about this.

Been wanting to pick up House of Leaves but reviews so far have only been 50-50. Might just pick it up soon anyway for the sake of it being original and one of its kind. Part of it is crytic, with reverse print, and in-code.

The story itself sounds good, but i don't feel like working to read or understand a book. All that hocus pocus this author uses feels pretentious.

You really should. No, it's not for everyone, but I think it's one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking horror novels of recent years. And make no mistake, it is a horror novel, no matter what the critics may say.

ok - my take on HOL - and there might be 'spoilers below - so skip if you really don't want to know anyting more'













i liked (nay loved) the 'core' story about the family and the house that keeps growing inside without growing outside (the whole thing starts when this family finds a new door in their bedroom and a new hallway that cannot spatially exist within the house itself - a whole space/time warp sort of thing. i thought the characters were compelling and the whole notion downright creepy.

i was a bit less taken with the outer stories that wrap around this one and there are (at least two) - the first outer layer is that the story of the family is actually a documentary filmed by the father (who is a famous photographer who wanted to make a documentary about his family settling down into a new house) and we are told the story of this documentary through an academic book that talks about the symbolism and imagery of the documentary and the apparent controversy that has raged about whether the documentary is REAL footage or is faked. this part i liked 'ok' - it was an interesting way to tell the story of the family/house but near the end it becomes more about the 'silly politics' of academia and literary critics and postmodernism and started to feel like a satiric polemic

my least favorite 'wrapping' is the story of johnny t(forget his last name) who finds this manuscript of the 'academic book' in a friend's apartment - in this outer shell the whole book/documentary thing is just a fictional tale - but the book sort of haunts johnny (the author is the brother of the lead singer of the band Poe who had a song called 'angry johnny' off an album that is, apparently, designed to correspond to the book).

the book does some interesting things with typesetting (some of the pages spiral around, others are up and down, etc. and there are some pictures and other features that make it interesting. . . but for me the emotional core of the novel got lost a bit in the trickery of the presentation/telling.

i'd also say that i had a bit of a backlash against it because many friends were telling me it was this groundbreaking novel that was better than James Joyce and would change the face of literature - which, for me, was definitely not the case!

HoL is far and away my favorite horror novel of all time. It's the only horror novel that I can remember actually scaring me as an adult. It is a bit of work, but it's definitely worth it.

Has anyone read Danielewski's new book, Only Revolutions? I've got it, but the layout looks so complex and challenging that I haven't tried diving in. Am I missing out?

Sam

A friend of mine recomended this to me. He had a really nice first edition of it.