Who else here thinks this book should be made into a movie by David Cronenberg? It makes perfect sense. He's taken on this type of subject matter before. I think the notion of directing "unfilmmable books" really intrigues the guy, i.e. Burroughs "Naked Lunch" and Ballards "Crash". I think this book would fit in well with his filmography. How can we notify him that this book should be his next project? If anyone out there knows him personally, please tell him.

Danielewski has created a genre of his own. Reading House of Leaves is like watching a film on paper. His method of writing in frames (as if it were a film reel) is nothing short of genius. His use of footnotes and fake texts had me feeling like I was doing investigative research on something absolutely terrifying. Johnny Truant's interludes and back story are another amazing innovation in writing. The best way that I describe this work to fellow readers is that it's a intertwined three-part narrative.

Perspective 1: The Navidsons
Perspective 2: Zampano's Research on the Navidsons
Perspective 3: Johnny Truant's struggling with Zampano's work and dealing with life in general.

Moreover, this is merely scratching the surface of this masterwork. I imagine you could spend years "finishing" this novel. In fact, you'll find yourself going back to it months after reading the final chapters wondering if you missed anything.

The only reason that I didn't give this a five star review was because of the level of pornographic literary imagery in some of the sex scenes. I found some of it distasteful and quite vulgar. I guess it adds to the shock value but I found it mostly unnecessary. Some people love this stuff but I didn't. Just a personal opinion.

Bottom-line: If there is any justice in the world, this novel will go down in history as a ground-breaker. It's masterfully crafted and its architect deserves a huge pat on the back.

This book is absolutely amazing. I would recommend it to anyone. Actually I wouldn't. It literally changed my life... It's moved me to feel things I've never felt before. I find myself scared of the dark (I've never been scared of it) and the book has made me hyperventilate and everything has become so unusual to me. It's a great book, but it's more than just a book..

This book is an adventure wrapped up in a mystery inside a fantasy world almost too real to be fictional. It was absolutely captivating.

A lot of people I know do like it, so there's something to be said for that, but I couldn't stand it. I have to say, when I first got it I was excited, just opening up to a random page, it looked chaotic and fascinating. I saw the comparisons to Borges, Pynchon and Nabokov in the reviews and I thought it would probably be an amazing book. Then I read it. The problem with it is, that though Danlielewski took a lot from Borges, Pynchon, Nabokov and Wallace, all of it was superficial. The story lacked a purpose. It was really something more like playing with style, without a good story to tell.

It might be interesting to people looking to disect and analyze something because it's there, but I personally don't think it's worth your time. It has worked as a decent primer for some people to get them into more serious authors like those whose work it's compared to, though, and if you're unfamiliar with authors like Nabakov and Pynchon, you may like it, but if you have read them and liked them, avoid it.

This book, if you'll let it, will consume you. I still have trouble staying inside sometimes (I finished the book about a month ago), and if I think about it enough, I'll get chills.

This is a great book. One of the best things about this book is that you won't find others like it. The style is eclectic and draws you in from the beginning. Not only that you will learn a lot about an assortment of subjects (i.e. mazes, echos,...) Plus the description of the "film" in the book is very interesting and will leave you wanting to know more.
It is a good book for those that don't mind non-sequitors and unconventional storytelling.

Mark Z. Danielewski's "The House of Leaves" is certainly a rare find. It maintains to be funny, sexy, scary, amusing, and beautiful at the same time. A nice blend of Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, The Blair Witch Project, and The Ring, with a style similar to famous authors Stephen King and Dean Koontz, it is, in itself, "a poetic labyrinth" with a story structure that is between an expository text/film review/journal/novel

I came across some references to House of Leaves and was intrigued by the reviews. I became even more interested when my local library told me they didn't have it and didn't have any plans to get it. Hmmmmm. I came home and ordered it, then waited for this masterpiece that people either obsess over or hate entirely to get here. I flipped through it when it arrived to see what all the hype was about. My first impression was that it was a cluster...erm...mess. All of the strange formatting and different fonts made it seem horribly busy and my impression was that someone had gone out of his way to make a statement. Ah, the disappointment.

Not one to give up, I resigned myself to start the book and see where it led me. Only a few pages in (hooked), I made the executive decision to arm myself with those little page-marker sticky notes so I could go back and re-visit things of interest. Superficially, the challenge at first is to develop your own tempo in reading between the story (The Navidson Report) and the narrative. It took a little getting used to but once I got the hang of it, I actually found that it added to the story. This is expounded on further into the book when the strange formatting and page layout comes into play. What I'd thought would be a horribly distracting, PITA gimmick turned out to be an integral part of the story. Yes, in a few places it was a bit distracting. However, in most places it heightened the reading experience and upped the creepy factor exponentially. In some spots I actually found myself holding my breath as I turned the pages, not physically able to read fast enough to keep up with the suspense and dismay that was building as I read. Wow. My copy is littered with those sticky page-markers. Yeah, its that good and I found myself embracing its complexity. It grows on you.

This book has more layers than an onion. There is symbolism and foreshadowing galore, and a multitude of hidden codes within the text. Some folks will only catch the blatantly obvious, but the more astute people will catch the subtle 'secret' codes that have been painstakingly included. Everything in there has been carefully placed for a reason. I found after I read it the first time that the fun of reading it a second time is that you know what happens so you can pay even closer attention to the hidden goodies. Keep some page markers handy as you read so that you can go back and analyze the things that caught your eye on the first read.

When you're finished, I strongly suggest that you visit the HoL forum on the Internet. There are people who have picked this book apart and I guarantee you will be astounded by what you've missed and what others have found.

I loved the interactive experience of this book. It is a highly personal experience for the reader. A lot of the underlying messages and tones (and codes) can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, leaving plenty of room for the book to mean something entirely personal to you as a reader. It is artistic, experimental, and a fun read. I strongly recommend it.

Its great, can be confusing... but its such a clever and witty book. very modern.

This book is not nearly as smart as it thinks it is. In fact, it's a pretty empty book trying very hard to get you to think it's a smart book. Had to laugh reading all the comparisons to Joyce, Pynchon, etc. There is NOTHING in this book that's remotely "Joycean". The prose is terrible -- clunky and imprecise -- and the "erudition" feels like James Michener-style research.

As a story, it's a lot like "The Good Solider" -- all foreshadowing, no actual story. As a scary story, it's a lot like H.P. Lovecraft -- plenty of adjectives telling you how awful, horrible, frightening, etc. everything is, but there's nothing remotely awful, horrible or frightening behind any of it.

All in all, a big bore tricked up with typography. Read a genuinely smart book, like The Recognitions, instead.

This is no easy journey, but well worth the trip. So may layers to peel away, but the story is fascinating, and eerie, and unexpected, and utterly original, and written in a truly original and stunning style. You will be haunted by this book....in a very good way, hopefully.

The worst "novel" I've ever read. Quite possibly the worst possible "novel" ever written. Plotless, poorly written, incoherent, and juvenile. The language takes turns being dreary and over-the-top melodramatic. Danielweski seems to believe that he can substitute pointless (unless his point was to uproot an entire South American rain-forest) typography and pseudo foot notes that take up half a page for an actual plot. I think it's a disgrace to literature and to the human race that people actually mistake incoherence for artistic talent.

If you liked this book it's possibly because you couldn't understand half of what was being said, and in turn were probably awed by the fact that you didn't get it.

This hugely ambitious debut is the kind of book destined to polarize opinions among readers. While I can relate to pretty much every criticism stated here and in other forums, the many robust strengths to be savored in House of Leaves make the effort required to consume it more than worthwhile. With at least a handful of passages that rank among the most frightening pieces of prose I've ever read, peppered with some startlingly vivid doses of eroticism, what really makes this book a masterpiece in my estimation is the unexpectedly moving love story at its core. I'm pretty sure I located the key that unlocks the whole book in the last line of page 517, though there's certainly more than one valid interpretation for such a deliberately ambiguous story. Not for everyone, but fans of literary horror with a taste for meta-fictional indulgences will love it. I'd also strongly recommend a new novel by Austin Williams called Crimson Orgy. While totally different in style, this book shares some similarities with H.O.L. in the way it deconstructs a "legendary" horror film that might not even exist. It's a thrilling treat for genre fans.

I got this book because I his sister's album is my all-time favorite, Haunted by Poe. I didn't expect it to be under "horror." It took about two weeks to read. It's not an easy read because of all tangents.
It wasn't easy to explain to my family: I'm reading a book about a guy who's writing a book from the notes of an old blind man about a documentary about a strange house. "What's new in the house?" I can't tell you because I've just spent the last hour reading about this guy's personal life and then an academic essay about mythology.
I did like the characters, even unlikeable, at least I felt for them. There were jokes, there was emotion, it was just messed up.
Certain things about the book were frustrating, like the fake references. I felt like I was learning something, except maybe it's not true. I hated the pages with one word on them, what a waste of time and paper. I feel compelled to go back and write cryptic messages on them. I loved Tom's jokes about perception.

Definitely not like any book you've ever read. I found this book to be a page-turner and not at all as intimidating to read as I thought. The actual book itself is 530 pages, and I admit I haven't read the entire appendix. It was actually an pretty easy read, except for when you physically have to turn the book upside or hold it in front of a mirror. The prose is mostly simplistic and straightforward with occasional forays into a stream-of-consciousness style in the footnotes. The comparisons to Pynchon and Wallace are indeed absurd, as another reviewer stated... in terms of the strength of the prose or the encyclopedic intellect of their respective works.

I found the Navidson story to be genuinely unnerving and unsettling. I used to have dreams where I found myself exploring secret tunnels in the basement of my house or finding extra rooms that didn't exist in reality.... apparently Jung talked about similar dreams. Supposedly in dreams, houses represent ourselves...so exploring a house correlates with expanding your own awareness. The Johnny Truant story did seem a little cliche in comparison.

The innovations in the spatial layout of the text were constantly inventive and added an extra dimension to the narrative. I have no idea how many of the ideas have been used before, as I am not familiar with the entire canon of modern fiction. In addition to the layering and exploration of narrative art-forms (a film within a story within a book within a book being edited being read) you are never sure which sources are actual books or total BS...as he references both real books and invents his own facetious scholarly books/journals...as well as pens in cameos from famous artists and thinkers (D impersonating Kubrick for example) in addition to real quotes from literature.

In the end, this HOUSE leaves you with the sense of experiencing someone else's nightmare..similar to watching Eraserhead. A HOUSE where you leave (but yet don't) to descend into the darkness, a HOUSE where the layout is as transient as the rustling of leaves...which is in fact where the couple ultimately end up... outside on the front lawn. I have said enough, I will take my leave now.

How many people out there can get into this book? 3. The best marketers in the world all got together and sold a million copies of this pile of [...] and made an 'author' out of a guy that can't tell a story to save his life. I talked to someone about it once, he said that you just don't have to like it for the first half and then it gets good. that is what i look for in a book 40k words that I hate before it gets almost okay.

Know anyone else like this?

I'm looking at you David Foster Wallace.

If you like reading, and thinking, and expanding your vocabulary, (and, I should probably add, expanding your mind) then House of Leaves is a book you want to read. Most of the negative reviews I read here said either House of Leaves "had nothing to say," or "the story is boring."

To claim that House of Leaves has nothing to say is to spit in the face of art. All art is interpretive; House of Leaves will show you things about yourself that maybe you didn't want to think about. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was the case for me. Danielewski went to great lengths to make sure the narrative was fractured and disjointed, so if people don't understand it, it is either because they didn't want to put in the effort, or because they don't possess the capacity to see the fascinating overlapping and interweaving of metaphors, symbols, and allegories (not to mention characters, events, and times).

This book really does everything extraordinarily. I think many people who were disappointed by House of Leaves' plot were horror fans looking for a little mindless death. Serious, thinking people will be intrigued by the expanding house, the descent of Johnny, Navidson's perspective and motivations, and Zampano's brilliant and insane interludes. The bizarre, dark plot matches the tone - and, somehow, even the symbolism - perfectly.

If you usually read John Grisham, Sue Grafton, J. K. Rowling, James Patterson, Stephen King, Dan Brown, etc. this book may not be for you. These authors are great, but provide little more to the reader than television; they are the literary equivalent of a "popcorn movie." Enjoyment of this novel takes time and energy. But I would advise anyone to give it a try. The fruits of your labor may be worth more than you can imagine.

The title may not be entirely true, but this is the most modern, most thought provoking book that I've read. Danielewksi honestly believes that writing is a thing to be thought over, and this is one of the few books I've seen that takes the tools of the literary medium to they're absolute extent. There is no way this could be a movie, it's too deep, there are too many layers for it to work.

House of Leaves is a story about Johnny Truant, a drug addict who finds a manuscript of house of leaves, a literary criticism on the movie, The Navidson Record. The Navidson Record is a movie very similar to the Blair witch project-it presents itself as reality, and it never presents the 'enemy'. There are two main points to the House that will keep you coming back-

-The "monster", if there is one, is never presented. This solves something that's a major problem in horror. Lovecraft, for example, had a tendency to describe his monsters as horrific, but when you finally confronted them, they weren't as scary. The monster never appears, so there is never a big climax that leaves you happy with a sense of completion.
-There is no ending, really. Sorry for spoiling the book for you to a degree, but the ending won't matter by the time you get to it. There is a difference between some books, which leave you with a cliffhanger, and House of Leaves, which just...ends. I would compare it to the Wall, which ends with the words "Isn't this where..." and begins with the words "...we came in?". The House is never ending, though you can try to end the story for yourself, you know that you'll never be able to, so you're left with an empty hole where the ending should go, and you keep on going back to it.

Okay, first off ... I have to admit ... I have not finished reading this novel yet. But I have to say, as a visual artist this has got to be the most interesting book I've come across.

It is a very thick book. Not exactly light reading by any means. But the book is presented in many forms, coming from many personas and suggested publication sources. Very docudrama-oriented, which completely reflects the nature of the focal character of the work. A fiction labyrinth that not only emotionally rips at you as you journey along into the destructive innards of the 'house' { always appearing in blue throughout the book, typically with some strange baseline shift to certain character }, but it also visually falls apart and creates semantic realities that only make sense in the multi-thread mayhem created by Danielewski.

Certain pages have boxes of lists that literally dissolve through from page to page to page. Upside-down text ... fictitious footnotes that sometimes continue on for many pages at time. Various font usage to indicate different streams per character.

The 'house' is a monster that breathes and destroys. Representing something dark and horrid about our times.

The type falls apart mid-novel ... until only one word per page teases you along.

Danielewski paints such a believable portrait of a filmmaker's madness and obsession with the 'house' through footnotes, references, lists, magazine and journal articles ... it reminds me of the hyperreality that Nicholson Baker presents in novels like Vox or The Fermata, only steeped with an intellectually dank serious filter strewn with dust and blood, creaking wooden floors, nightmarish in every aspect. Sinister.

You have to read this book.

I bought it 5 years ago ... let it sit on a shelf for far too long. Once I picked it up, I was hooked, hypnotized, entranced, bewildered. Just amazing writing that draws you in. I highly recommend it, even if you never finish it { not sure that I will }, it leaves an impression and makes you believe in the impossible.

A true vision and masterpiece. Perfect.

Even if it takes you a season or a year to finish this book, you will be completely in awe (if not a little insane) by the end. Do it. It will enhance your perspective of writers.

I got pointed to this book because of its formatting (I'm a sucker for "different" books as well as interesting covers) and a friend said it's a great book.

The book has been discussed a gazillion times, so I won't repeat the story. I'll just tell you what I found strong and weak. A strength for me is the fact that there are quite a few sections that were pageturners for me. I also loved the section with the letters from J.T.'s mom, so I'll pick up the seperate book about them too. Very strong.

Weaknesses, to me, are by far and foremost the top one: The ending. Tension, excitement, it all builds up, and then doesn't explode into a big wow'ing thing, no, here it just escaped in one of those particularly foul smelling farts. Not a lot of noise, rather unimpressive and it doesn't smell too pretty either. ;) I know that more good writers suffer from not being able to end their stories, but this was rather disappointing to me. Another weakness, in my view, is the amount of material that's useless and can be skipped without getting you into trouble of missing anything. Like watching a soap opera once every 3 weeks, it's enough to know everything.

I like the formatting, although I can see that many find it overdone, especially when measured against the text being delivered. Other books with some non-standard formatting (the raw shark texts, microserfs) had a better content-to-format ratio. Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad book. I've read many many books that are worse. Unfortunately the ambitious presentation of the material leaves a little disappointed feeling with me after reading it.

I really wanted to like this novel. I paid about $20 for it. To the author's credit, it's certainly an ambitious novel, perhaps the most ambitious novel I've read for this decade. Perhaps part of the problem comes from Danielewski trying way too hard to come up with something creative and unique.
However, footnotes and the unusual way the words are actually arranged on the paper hardly make it beautifully written or even literary (it just wastes about a hundred pages of paper per printed copy, and that means that ultimately you're not paying an extra five dollars for more words, just black spaces). The fact that it is incoherent doesn't make it artistic.
While the story begins with an interesting concept, the storytelling (and I use that term somewhat loosely) is so detached that I don't really care who lives or dies. In fact, about halfway through the book I'm actually hoping that Danielewski will finish some of the characters off, just to get them out of the way (and maybe cut the book down some 200 pages). The entire book is very dreary without being intellectual, which leaves one feeling depressed but not frightened, and the book's portrayal of a spiral into madness isn't believable or engrossing.
The awed reviews this novel reeled in did not prepare me for 700 pages of wasted ink and paper. Maybe at the hands of a different writer this book might have something else. As it is, this might just be the most awful book I've ever read.

Eeek! I love this book soooo much! It's splendidly artistic...literarially and visually. It is a labyrinth of a read, but it is so worth it. I feel like this is a great book for avid readers, but also for people who don't read as well. By that, I mean that I think it is good for people who like crazy movies like Vanilla Sky or any David Fincher films....if you read it, you'll know what I mean.

Really, I love this book. It is not the scariest book I've ever read because I was broken as a child of the habit of being scared by movies and books and such. I watched and read too much so I can't judge the scariness. All I know is that I love this book. No monsters, ghosts, ghouls, murderers, none of that, just a house. Thats all. For those of you who do scare I imagine that what is contained in this book might scare you. This is an innovative horror tale. I love it.

Have you ever held a vial of mercury? Do you remember your surprise that first time? Your surprise to find the weight your eyes had told your hands to expect was a lie? This is the experience that often comes to mind when finding myself again holding this book... each time I find myself tempted to once again wander the halls within the House of Leaves.

This book is heavy, much more physically weighty than eyes say it should be. Whether this was intentionally crafted by the creators, or if this is only a residual psychosomatic phenomenon as a result of having read the book, I couldn't say. Both are plausible. Because of how much work was put into distorting this book, I suspect the former cause.

If so, this is only the first of a great many intended distortions. "House of Leaves" is a work of art that appears to be a book, and draws heavily from the genre of literature. It then adds from much more experimental fields to create a specific effect, while simultaneously telling multiple stories. The end result (at first glance) could be mistaken as "just some book." This sensory illusion quickly falls apart shortly into the reading.

Mercury. The reason such a small quantity is so heavy, of course, is due to density. There is simply more matter contained in the occupied space than past experiences have prepared your mind to expect. This darkness, density and weight is the intended effect behind "House of Leaves." The family at the core of this story, trained by experience to expect time and space to operate in only one way, first meet with this darkness upon the discovery that their house is larger on the inside than outside of it.

To briefly cover the introduction, the days following this discovery were barely captured, and only on some home video footage and notes. Zampano, who pieced this all together with tape, ink and every available writing surface, called this "The Navidson Record." Johnny Truant, who took the dead Zampano's notes from the apartment of the deceased, claims that this record is a lie. Both, however, realize that the truth or falsity of this record does not affect the story's telling.

What follows is The Navidson Record, detailing these last days, with footnotes from Zampano, Johnny Truant and The Editors. As previously stated, it is not long until... well... things fall apart. The family, the minds of those who passed on the notes, and the book itself.

If you've not yet read "House of Leaves," something inside me wants to tell you "this book is for you" and "put aside everything else 'til you've read it." The more honest part of me--the part that's been stirred to raw emotions at only the thought of this book, and can open to nearly any page to feel my eyes tear up--wants to let you know that, should you finish it, this book will not leave you as the same person you were before entering the House of Leaves; that, here, there is no forgiveness, no salvation, nor yellow-brick road; that, within these pages is a creature of shadow, and that this darkness adapts to you--the reader--the more you read.

To those readers strong in spirit, who seek that rare strength found only in facing an even stronger fear: "Seek ye, in the House of Leaves, a forge to form or break your spirit." To all else: "Seek ye, elsewhere, your salvation."

who now, here, ~ has walked the halls ~ that wind within ~ the House of Leaves?

Have you ever held a vial of mercury? Do you remember your surprise that first time? Your surprise to find the weight your eyes had told your hands to expect was a lie? This is the experience that often comes to mind when finding myself again holding this book... each time I find myself tempted to once again wander the halls within the House of Leaves.

This book is heavy, much more physically weighty than eyes say it should be. Whether this was intentionally crafted by the creators, or if this is only a residual psychosomatic phenomenon as a result of having read the book, I couldn't say. Both are plausible. Because of how much work was put into distorting this book, I suspect the former cause.

If so, this is only the first of a great many intended distortions. "House of Leaves" is a work of art that appears to be a book, and draws heavily from the genre of literature. It then adds from much more experimental fields to create a specific effect, while simultaneously telling multiple stories. The end result (at first glance) could be mistaken as "just some book." This sensory illusion quickly falls apart shortly into the reading.

Mercury. The reason such a small quantity is so heavy, of course, is due to density. There is simply more matter contained in the occupied space than past experiences have prepared your mind to expect. This darkness, density and weight is the intended effect behind "House of Leaves." The family at the core of this story, trained by experience to expect time and space to operate in only one way, first meet with this darkness upon the discovery that their house is larger on the inside than outside of it.

To briefly cover the introduction, the days following this discovery were barely captured, and only on some home video footage and notes. Zampano, who pieced this all together with tape, ink and every available writing surface, called this "The Navidson Record." Johnny Truant, who took the dead Zampano's notes from the apartment of the deceased, claims that this record is a lie. Both, however, realize that the truth or falsity of this record does not affect the story's telling.

What follows is The Navidson Record, detailing these last days, with footnotes from Zampano, Johnny Truant and The Editors. As previously stated, it is not long until... well... things fall apart. The family, the minds of those who passed on the notes, and the book itself.

If you've not yet read "House of Leaves," something inside me wants to tell you "this book is for you" and "put aside everything else 'til you've read it." The more honest part of me--the part that's been stirred to raw emotions at only the thought of this book, and can open to nearly any page to feel my eyes tear up--wants to let you know that, should you finish it, this book will not leave you as the same person you were before entering the House of Leaves; that, here, there is no forgiveness, no salvation, nor yellow-brick road; that, within these pages is a creature of shadow, and that this darkness adapts to you--the reader--the more you read.

To those readers strong in spirit, who seek that rare strength found only in facing an even stronger fear: "Seek ye, in the House of Leaves, a forge to form or break your spirit." To all else: "Seek ye, elsewhere, your salvation."

who now, here, ~ has walked the halls ~ that wind within ~ the House of Leaves?

I'll begin by trying to expose what this book is "about". A family moves in to a house in Virginia. Because the father of this family is a photographer and film-maker, he decides to put cameras everywhere for a real-life experience sort of thing. Then strange things happen. The house is apparently bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Then there's even a new door opening on the sheer unknown. I'll say no more on this, but eventually, Navidson, the father, edits all this into a movie. Later on, a man named Zamapanò writes "House of Leaves" which is about this documentary-film made by Navidson. Then, that document is found by Johnny Truant, who introduces the book and writes notes for it. And much more.

So basically what you get is 2 stories: the Navidson story with the house and its numinous mystery, and the Johnny Truant autobiographical parts. Of course, all of these are characters, and don't be fooled by the book description in the jacket or by the "second edition" because both of these are part of the story, not of our "reality".

For most of the book, I really thought it was incredibly good. There's a lot of good "horror" styled elements, and as an academic, I found it quite amusing all the play on footnotes and references to both real and bogus books and authors. If you're a lit student, you'll get some fun from those parts.

I personally preferred the Navidson story per se than the Truant stuff, though that is good too; but I just found myself sighing every time one of his giant footnotes came up. It's hard to give a well-balanced opinion on this novel. It's definitely an intriguing read and there are excellent things by the tonload, but you do get confused in some parts, namely the Truant stuff, where you don't really know what's happening, which I guess is intentional and part of the whole "going crazy in meaninglessness" deal.

It's greatly written, though, and it's certainly thought-provoking in more ways than one. At first I was afraid this novel would be nonsense upon nonsense, but it wasn't so. Be unafraid, it's absolutely readable; yet there are parts which are trickier, but you won't fail to note they were meant to be so. Up until page 500 or beyond, I forget, I thought that this was genius work, and I still think that it is. My only negative feedback is the following.

I think it was a daunting task to give that novel a proper ending, and in some ways, I think it didn't work here. In fact, and that may save the novel in my eyes, there's not really an ending. I mean, there definitely IS, don't get me wrong, there is an ending, but it's not all that satisfying, and I don't mean to say too much about it. There are many ends to this, I guess, and like a labyrinth, which it is written to look like, there's not really an end ever.

"House of Leaves" is probably this century's - or the past one's - "Moby Dick". It has the same experimental taste, albeit a century and a half later, and it seeks the impossible White Whale too. I can't say "numinous" enough when talking about this, or that, novel. And if you don't know that word "get thee to your OED" because that's one important word.

So, to sum up, this is an excellent book and certainly something you've never quite experienced before.

As others have pointed out, House of Leaves is the very definition of post-modern. The novel chronicles the story of a tattoo parlor employee, Johnny Truant, as he discovers the unfinished magnum opus of a dead man, Zampano, and sets about attempting to edit and publish this magnum opus (for Zampano's sake as well as his own). Johnny quickly becomes obsessed with his project, shutting himself off from the world and undergoing bizarre and surreal life changes as he pores over Zampano's epic work. The title of Zampano's unfinished literature? House of Leaves. On the inside of this novel, Zampano is credited as the author of House of Leaves, with Johnny Truant providing the edits and notes, and oh, lest I forget, there's also another mysterious editor who went over "the internet addition" of House of Leaves and cleaned it up before the book was published on a wide scale.

Except, of course, that this is Mark Z. Danielewski's novel, and it was never an internet cult phenomenon that later made its way into publication. ...Or is it? And if what I'm saying doesn't make a lick of sense to you and leaves your head spinning, then welcome to the trip that is House of Leaves: a book within a book, an author within an author, a reality within a reality. Huge, convoluted, dizzying, and altogether a pleasure to talk about -- indeed, describing the book is as enjoyable as reading it, if not more so.

Zampano's House of Leaves teeters on the line between a dramatic narrative and an academic essay, though it seems to be an attempt at capturing the latter; its subject matter is a fictional documentary called The Navidson Record, a film made by photojournalist Will Navidson, which is itself the story of Navidson and his family's turmoil and strife in a house that's constantly sprouting dark corridors and ever expanding dimensions. Zampano's work is loaded with (fake) quotes, citations, and footnotes. In places, text moves around the page in strange ways and Zampano rambles on and on; there are sections scratched out, upside down. Sometimes one word and one word only will appear on a page. The word "house" is always emphasized every time it appears (in my copy, it was in shifting grey text, though in some copies, it's blue). Johnny Truant's story takes place alongside the telling of The Navidson Record, and in some ways, there are parallels to be found between the two tales. Truant's story is told in first person past tense, whereas Zampano's book is mostly written in third person present tense. The two are distinguished by different fonts.

Make no mistake: House of Leaves is a difficult book. It's frustrating, and frustratingly self-aware.

Early on, Zampano all but invites you to give up on the book, to proclaim it "prolix" and needlessly confusing; the narrative echoes his words by stretching you to your limits on multiple occasions. Many people won't like this book, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. But if you're looking for something different and off-beat, House of Leaves has a little bit of everything to whet your appetite: love, lust, loss, madness, horror, sadness, drama, satire and parody (caricatures of both Stephen King and Harold Bloom appear), and style. Lots of pretentious, shameless style. I enjoyed it. It infuriated me at times, as it wanted to, but it hit me hard in the gut and made me feel and made me remember and made me ache, and I think it's worth a look if you're up for a challenge.

But recall Zampano's words: they say literature stands the test of time, and he can think of no greater joy than if this book is proven to be found wanting. If you don't like this book, the book accepts your disapproval. As it says in the dedication, "This is not for you." But you never know. Maybe it will be.

As others have pointed out, House of Leaves is the very definition of post-modern. The novel chronicles the story of a tattoo parlor employee, Johnny Truant, as he discovers the unfinished magnum opus of a dead man, Zampano, and sets about attempting to edit and publish this magnum opus (for Zampano's sake as well as his own). Johnny quickly becomes obsessed with his project, shutting himself off from the world and undergoing bizarre and surreal life changes as he pores over Zampano's epic work. The title of Zampano's unfinished literature? House of Leaves. On the inside of this novel, Zampano is credited as the author of House of Leaves, with Johnny Truant providing the edits and notes, and oh, lest I forget, there's also another mysterious editor who went over "the internet addition" of House of Leaves and cleaned it up before the book was published on a wide scale.

Except, of course, that this is Mark Z. Danielewski's novel, and it was never an internet cult phenomenon that later made its way into publication. ...Or is it? And if what I'm saying doesn't make a lick of sense to you and leaves your head spinning, then welcome to the trip that is House of Leaves: a book within a book, an author within an author, a reality within a reality that is huge, convoluted, dizzying, and altogether a pleasure to describe.

Zampano's House of Leaves teeters on the line between a dramatic narrative and an academic essay, though it seems to be an attempt at capturing the latter; its subject matter is a fictional documentary called The Navidson Record, a film made by photojournalist Will Navidson, which is itself the story of Navidson and his family's turmoil and strife in a house that's constantly sprouting dark corridors and ever expanding dimensions. Zampano's work is loaded with (fake) quotes, citations, and footnotes. In place, text moves around the page in strange ways and Zampano rambles on and on; there are sections scratched out, upside down. Sometimes one word and one word only will appear on a page. The word "house" is always emphasized every time it appears (in my copy, it was in shifting grey text, though in some copies, it's blue). Johnny Truant's story takes place alongside the telling of The Navidson Record, and in some ways, there are parallels to be found between the two tales. Truant's story is told in first person past tense, whereas Zampano's book is mostly written in third person present tense. The two stories are distinguished by different fonts.

Make no mistake: House of Leaves is a difficult book. It's frustrating, and frustratingly self-aware.

Early on, Zampano all but invites you to give up on the book, to proclaim it "prolix" and needlessly confusing; the narrative echoes his words by stretching you to your limits on multiple occasions. Many people won't like this book, and I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. But if you're looking for something different and off-beat, House of Leaves has a little bit of everything to whet your appetite: love, lust, loss, madness, horror, sadness, drama, satire and parody (caricatures of both Stephen King and Harold Bloom appear), and style. Lots of pretentious, shameless style. I enjoyed it. It infuriated me at times, as it wanted to, but it hit me hard in the gut and made me feel and made me remember and made me ache, and I think it's worth a look if you're up for a challenge.

But recall Zampano's words: they say literature stands the test of time, and he can think of no greater joy than if this book is proven to be found wanting. If you don't like this book, the book accepts your disapproval. As it says in the dedication, "This is not for you." But you never know. Maybe it will be.

I truly can't begin to describe how awful this book is. Did some of these reviewers even read the same book I did? This has to be one of the least scary, most boring books I have ever read. It isn't even well written. The story is weak. The way in which it is compiled is perhaps "new", but it is new for a reason; it makes the book a near impossible work to read. I tried to battle my way through this book numerous times in the past but all the forays into things that don't matter to the story caused me to lose interest. I recently picked it up and pushed on through it and what am I left with? No story, that's for sure. People exploring a house and hearing growling noises gets old. There is very little suspense in this book and no pay off. This story isn't funny either. It attempts to be at times, but the humour is so contrived it falls flat. The whole "Truant" section was unbearable. Why do I have to read about some guy's numerous sexual encounters in a horror book? I suppose some readers might gasp or find them shocking enough to hold their interest. All they did was bore me, and add a whole bunch more crap I had to plow through. All this book amounts to is a gimmick.

A friend recommended this book to me. She said it was really scary and life-changing. I did not find it in the least bit scary. I would describe this book as a cross between The Amityville Horror and The Blair Witch Project. I thoroughly enjoyed the dual-action throughout the book, and was really sorry when it was finished. My only disappointment was to find it was more "lightweight" (MUCH less horror) than I had expected. Otherwise, it was a fun, quick summer read.

(I swear I already wrote a review for this. The Minotaur must have eaten it.)

This book will disappoint you if you're looking for a coherent tale. It will disappoint you if you read it because your friends say it's the best novel ever. A good friend of mine hated it until she decided to regard it as "interactive sculpture" -- I cannot say I am entirely sure what that means.

All that said, I was in no way disappointed. I find this one of those novels that seems to have a psychedelic effect just from the reading of it. I was changed by the time I was done. It was a book that required that I do some of the work, too. No spoonfeeding of tales here.

Like The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan, Vellum: The Book of All Hours, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text, Ulysses and Chunnel Surfer II (my book) and others, HoL seems to have been created in a new form in which multiple stories are shredded then re-woven to form a new whole, bigger and more interesting than the sum of its parts. Who knows where this trend will end?

In short, I wish I could give this 0 stars. I picked it up because of the raves - "scariest book I've ever read", etc - and can only conclude these ravers haven't read very many books at all. After reading it, I come back and look at the 5 star reviews here and note that even they caveat that they don't really understand the book and are giving the stars based on things like "ambition" (ie "A for effort"?)

A footnote on p149 pretty much sums up what I think of the book: "Other times I am sure it's just one big f***ing train wreck."

HoL is an incredibly uneven book. To a fan of horror, sci-fi and Surrealism, as much as of good literature and avant garde writing, this novel promises a lot, but delivers very little. The key to any great novel is a good story line (a problem that many PoMo writers have is that they get so caught up in their intellectual hijinks that they often entirely forget about the story). HoL actually has a moderately interesting storyline, but this gets painfully muddled in the overlayering of narratives and overshadowed by the inanity of the "Johnny Truant" narrator.

Truant is as obvious and oblivious as his name (meaning "vagabond", which he, not surprisingly, is). His narration, in comparison to the moderately powerful writing of the main narrator (Zampano), is simply painful to read. In some instances, it's almost as if D. is worried that the reader won't get the psuedo-intellectual jargon of the main narrator, so he has Johnny chime in to "explain" some things. In the end, in attempting to create a sympathetic, if slightly pop-culture, character, D. unfortunately writes a caricature, so stereotypical and overdrawn, in fact, that there is nothing interesting in about half of the book. It's like watching MTV's Real World.

The rest of the writing simply isn't strong enough to support the weight of the bad writing. Personally, it seems like D. was so interested in writing a revolutionary novel that he forgot that he was supposed to be writing a novel in the first place. Furthermore, D.'s innovations are, in many ways, entirely pointless. In this respect the book is far less revolutionary than other great avant garde works where the form complements the style and innovation accentuates the narrative resulting in a synthesis of form and story that pushes the notions of genre, form, content, etc. in new directions. Random fonts, etc. do not constitute revolutionary writing - in fact, anyone with a computer can muck around with fonts, color, etc., and anyone with PhotoShop (or an equivalent) can do even more.

This is D.'s freshman book, and as the Truant character tells us, sometimes finding a "frosh" instead of a true academic is better, something I might agree with if this novel weren't so bad. The truth is that a lot of people will be pulled in by the bells and whistles, by the usage of font, image and color, but since these really don't support the narrative in any meaningful way, they're kinda like painting flashy flames down the side of an '81 Honda. The faults of this kind of literary slight of hand can be seen clearly in the reviews to his second novel "Revolutions", where the tricks are apparently beginning to wear thin, even for fans of HoL.

Sorry-haven't read yet-but regarding The Alchemist--amazing speed in shipping-book was like NEW and I will always recommend Amazon and the sender of the book. KEEP PEOPLE LIKE HIM/HER with your business !!
Victoria

It wasn't scary. It wasn't interesting. It wasn't particularly well-written. It was difficult to read. In short, WTF?

I enjoyed this book, it was unique in it's style and content. There is a lot to learn from the "house" and it's inhabitants. I would recommend skipping the foot notes, they can slow you down, and be distracting - maybe that's the point.

Those who can't write write 'post-modern' novels, which is not to say that post-modern novels are uniformly bad, only that post-modern literary devices (pseudo-scholarly footnotes, fragmented storylines, clever font manipulations, lengthy quotes in foreign languages, to name a few), are all too often, these days, the refuge of writers who lack talent enough to write more conventional novels. HoL is a staggeringly dull novel (did it really give Gregory Maguire [see book jacket] nightmares? Did he really have to stop reading it before bedtime? He must scare pretty easily). Rather, I should say, it is conventionally dull (for the lameness of the story, and the very poor quality of the writing), and "staggering" for its sheer volume. It must have taken Danielewski months on end just to type the manuscript, let alone proof-read, edit, draft and re-draft chapters, etc. It beggars the imagination.

HoL is not merely lame. It is also staggeringly (once again, I am staggered, truly) pretentious, replete as it is with pseudo-scholarly references, long passages of pseudo-film- and literary-criticism, endless pseudo-(fill in other field) notes, etc. Bret Easton Ellis [see book jacket, again] moronically opines, "One can imagine Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace bowing at Danielewski's feet, choking with astonishment, surprise, laughter, and awe." Ellis must have been choking on something himself when he wrote this. I've never read Ballard and read very little King. I have read Wallace and Pynchon, however. By any measure, HoL is only the crudest evocation of these authors' works. Whatever one thinks of Infinite Jest or Gravity's Rainbow, as novels, at the very least they attest the wide-ranging intellects of the authors who conceived them. HoL, by contrast, is all flash, tiresome tiresome flash, and no substance.

It is vastly overrated -- hardly the "demonically brilliant book...impossible to ignore, put down, or persuasively conclude reading" that Jonathan Lethem [book jacket, again] says it is.

House of Leaves = Waste of Time

What a ride. In my copy Bret Eston Ellis has reviewed it and asked Will I ever recover? I've had a week of no sleep, reading at stop lights and general dysphoria. I am now exhausted but atleast finished. This book is more than a story; it's a disease, an experience, a phenomenon. You'll read it upside down, back-to-front, three pages at once, some pages not at all.
I found it lost momentum for a moment near the end, but by then I needed the break. This novel will play you like no book has.
In House of Leaves, one of the characters burns his own fingers so he has light to read by. I would have too. 5 stars.

Wow. Literally just finished this two minutes ago. Impressed that while everything is so cram-packed into it (psychology, philosophy, horror, supernatural, drugs, sex, you name it...not to mention that there are actually 2+ separate stories going on here), it is still lucid and accessible.
Something of this length usually takes me about a week to get through, but i started this last night. It moves at a rapid pace, and i disagree with other reviewers who were hindered by the footnotes and odd formatting--those novelties just pull it all right along.

The back of my copy has a review that comparing this to Thomas Pynchon. I read Gravity's Rainbow about a month ago and i see absolutely no similarities. Each has its own merits, and i can't say which i like better because it really is comparing apples to oranges. Pynchon's work seems more intellectual but maybe that's because i didn't understand all of it (yeah, you try it, buddy) and his depth seems oxymoronically to approach the vague. House of Leaves is, as i've said, quite accessible and rapid-paced, but sometimes the intellect therein seems a pretentious facade, like when you realize that many of the cited sources are fakes.

What is put together here reminds me a lot of the first novels, circa 1700s, by Laurence Sterne, Henry Fielding, Swift, and Defoe. The idea of a story within a story to promote verisimilitude seems novel here but has been used in literature for hundreds of years. Including letters in a novel was popular at the beginning of the genre (reading those from Johnny's deranged and institutionalized mother in Appendix II E is a must), and unusual format or pictures within the text can be found in Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (though admittedly not as abundant as in H.O.L). Thus while many readers are drawn to H.O.L. for its "wacky" aesthetic, it is not so original as to be "like no other novel you've ever read" (Newsweek).
So, while there is nothing new under the Sun....Danielewski's (or Zampano's?) work is nonetheless a remarkable foray into the theme of Dark, both within The Navidson Record and in the life of the "narrator(s)" as well.

I work in law enforcement and first heard of this book while doing a death investigation of a teenage boy who grusomely committed suicide. I was told he had been paranoid after reading this book, describing it as the most horrifying thing he had ever read. Clearly I had to find out why, so I bought it, read it, and honestly, I'm not sure why it made him so upset. HOL is an excellent book that challenges your mind and makes you think, but I didn't find it as "scary" as so many others have described it. Like many have stated before, it's a slow read and many pages take two or three reads to understand what the author is talking about. I'd only recommend the book to those who are willing to take the time and have patience with the it.

I work in law enforcement and first heard of this book while doing a death investigation of a teenage boy who grusomely committed suicide. I was told he had been paranoid after reading this book, describing it as the most horrifying thing he had ever read. Clearly I had to find out why, so I bought it, read it, and honestly, I'm not sure why it made him so upset. HOL is an excellent book that challenges your mind and makes you think, but I didn't find it as "scary" as so many others have described it. Like many have stated before, it's a slow read and many pages take two or three reads to understand what the author is talking about. I'd only recommend the book to those who are willing to take the time and have patience with the it.

A little tough to go back and forth between the sometimes very lengthy footnotes, but completely worth the time. AMAZING book. I can't say anything but good things about this title...

Very hard to get through, what with it's disjointed style...but well worth the effort. Fascinating, terrifying story.

A great read that blends post-modern lit crit forays with some genuinely frightening horror elements. While it probably wont make you question your worldview to the extent Johnny Truant pushes it in the text, it's still a fairly trippy ride. Danielewski plays with the typography in fun ways that stop just short of being overdone and experiments with narrating several perspectives at once, which works well but can make wading through some sections a chore.

Overall, an enjoyable and exceptional first novel.

It was a fantastic vocabulary lesson, however, I bought into this experience under the assumption that it would draw me into a psychological whirlpool. Danielewski clogged that toilet for me with overwritten rubbish and Picasso-themed word placement... which neither could possibly "add" to the experience. It just made me look like an inconsiderate jerk on the plane trying to tilt my novel around to read it in my cramped coach seat.


But, I must admit, Truant's psychological transgression in this novel was written extremely well. This character was very well developed by Danielewski to the point where I, a sheltered female, could even succumb to the character's mental anguish and nearly feel it as my own. His character starts out very inarticulate, elementary at best. As he delves deeper into the plot's rabbit hole, his speech patterns change as his persona is scarred with experience.

Borrow or rent from the library. Don't commit to it unless something draws you in as it did myself. Otherwise you're going to feel like you wasted a lot of time that you're never going to get back.

Fantastic book. I've never read a book like it, and I don't mean soley in terms of content, but presentation as well. You should be prepared to become engrossed in this book like very few others.

..bring them back down with what turned out to be an interesting idea marred with annoying language and ineffective commentary.

You know how the best way to become uncool is to try to be cool? That seems to parallel my feelings with this book. It tries to hard to be avantgarde and trippy that it falls flat. The author does not have near the command of the language that he needs to to build the kind of atmosphere that would have been most effective. His foray into trying to write in different styles depending on which of the three narrators is currently speaking is an utter failure. The rambling style of Truant is a huge detraction of the story, and I feel like his sole inclusion was to hit the reader over the head with the feeling of "this will change you" that keeps on being pushed.

With some of the reviews I read, I expected this to be on par with other books that challenged my perspective, such as "Infinite Jest", "The Wind Up Bird Chronicle", or even "The Name of the Rose". The premise had promise, but with the sledgehammer pounding "this is weird and trippy" into your head every moment, it fell flat and far short.

I would have given this book an extra star just with the exclusion of Truant. Parallel story lines are in vogue, but they are one of the hardest things to do well without having the disjointed feeling that hinder the building of suspense and flow. Also, making something modern and experimental is great as long as it helps tell the story. This doesn't. I feel like it was a crutch that allowed the author to spend less time focus making it truly memorable with language. How many weird blank pages and random quotes and non horizontal lines does it take to scream "This was edited by an amateur and a blind man who both went crazy!" At times it feels like he was one of those kids in high school who idolized e.e. cummings and make words stretch diagonally and up and down because I'm an artist! Finally, ask yourself this...how much of it was unnecessary? Would a few more pages with one word on them or a few less have changed the book? Or is it just as pretious as the scholars he mocks?
Borrow a copy. If you love it buy it. Just don't but it expecting it to be an epic. It's not.

This was a really hard read. Creepy and hard to follow but captivating all the same. When I reached the last page, I felt like I achieved something.