House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of House of Leaves
Book Review: very disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
The concept of House of Leaves is an interesting one, but the execution is extraordinarily poor. The writing is horrible, the characters are paper-thin, and some of the paraliterary conceits (or whatever they are) are so sophomoric I was actually embarrassed for the writer. Very much like the house in the novel, this book is a huge, sprawling mess with exactly nothing at its center. Do not waste your time on this book.Book Review: waste of time, paper, space
Summary: 1 Stars
I tried to find something positive to say about this novel and can only come up with: "The cover's nice!" I guess the idea is clever enough, but the gimmicky nature of the text is just overbearing. A friend of mine took one look at the blurbs on the back cover, including one from "writer" Bret Easton Ellis, and told me not to bother. I should have heeded his advice. I found myself ripping through the pretentious bits, the footnotes (my God, the footnotes!), and even the secondary story about the guy who finds the manuscript and is caught up in the horror of it all, to find out what happens with the house itself. Definitely not worth the time and energy. If you like tricky, read Eco, read Borges, read Pavich... but don't live to regret reading this mishmash.Book Review: weak, very weak
Summary: 1 Stars
This might have been a good novel, I'll admit that up front. It wasn't, unfortunately, the writing is one-dimensional. I was never convinced that "several" authors were writing this - it read more like Johnny Truant (i.e. Danielewski) was playing intellectual "dress-up". (Hint for Danielewski: merely changing fonts is not enough.) The Navidson Record could have been exciting and scary, but is was never enough of any one thing to really matter to me. It wasn't scary enough and it wasn't original enough. As with the rest of this novel, no explanation was given for the house, and I'm sorry, but if your going to tease me for over 700 pages either entertain me or enlighten me.
Danielewski should have published these stories individually, Truant's story is, at times, sad and compelling (one word - pekinese) but I don't think it had anything to do with what he was researching, clearly, he was "merely" going insane. Why wasn't that interesting enough? Johnny's last entry is an interesting story but what the hell does it mean! Who was the woman? who was the baby? why should we give a damn about that story? Does it relate to ANYTHING?
And lastly, why load this story down with Zampano's boring, irrelevant, and admittedly, fabricated footnotes? Unless one is a scholar, and lets face it who reading this book would be, the unending discourse Zampano has with himself is superfluous - made up footnotes within made up footnotes within a fictional novel! Why is Danielewski intent on wasting my time?
Book Review: words that are scary
Summary: 5 Stars
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