House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.23 You Save: $8.72 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $5.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of House of Leaves
Book Review: ?What the....?
Summary: 5 Stars
I am still asking myself what the heck this book is about. In the almost two months since actually reading it, whenever I happen to glance at it on my bookshelf I feel this urge to pick it up, open it, and flip through it.Just to see if anything has changed.
I don't usually critique something from a personal standpoint, but House of Leaves is, well, a personal story. Everyone I have spoken with about it, felt that it touched something deep within them, and yet they cannot quite figure out what that is.
How to describe House of Leaves? I don't even know the genre. It's a mix of horror and mystery, and some sort of strange hybrid of accadamia. House of Leaves is narrated by a guy named Johnny Truant, living in LA, working in a tattoo parlor, just doing his thing, like the rest of us. He finds a book, (I won't go into all the details of how he finds it), called the Navidson Record, which is an academic critisism of a film of the same name. The film, a documantary shot on film and video in black and white, is the chronicle of Will Navidson and his family's move to a North Carolina house. Navidson, a Pulitzer prize winning photo-journalist decides to document the move by setting up cameras all over the house.
At first everything seems fine, but....hey, where did that door come from? Yes, one morning, Will discoveres a door where there was no door the day before. It should lead outside, but it does not. Instead it leads into a labrynth, a maze of endless corridors and spiral staircases, and one really scary howl.
Not too mention, the house is about an eight of an inch longer inside than it is outside.
Now, if this novel was written by Stephen King or any of his ilk, it may have been a good old fashioned scare-fest. It would have kept you up at night and got you to turning the pages faster and faster. But....House of Leaves is not Stephen King. Or should I say it is, run through a shreader and then taped back together, just a bit out of order. Much of the novel is straitforward, and much is itself a maze of words that run backwards or upside down on the page. Some pages have only one or two lines which run diaganol or in a spiral. Then there are footnotes, some are interesting, adding new pieces of information to the already complex story. Others, are unnecessary to actually read, but add flavor to the novel. In addition, this is a book within a book. We read the Navidson Record, just as Johnny does, but also see and hear and read is reactions to it. Through his own footnotes we get a glimpse into his story, his life. (Wait til you get to the Pekinese, it'll absolutely devestate you).
All this might sound as if it is mearly for effect. It is. And it works. Somehow, it got to me. And on an extremely personal level. The novel haunted me. Even the boring parts, and there are plenty of those, got to me. There is a method in Mark Z. Danielewski's style which you don't quite understand until the book is over.
So what is this book about? Really? I don't know. I may have to read it again. I think it is about change, the mercurial quality of life. The fact that sometimes things happen and you cannot understand why or how or what will happen.
One night, I called a friend and we discussed the book. We started noticing things. I would say, "Look on page 321, now look at 253, look at how that's written here and here." And we'd figure something else out. It was as if the author had presented us the case, and now we were finding our own clues that had been hidden, strewn, throughout the novel.
One last note. My copy of House of Leaves has started falling apart. It has changed much like the house that the Navidson's moved into changed. I told my friend. He said that his book was falling apart in the same way. And his friend's book too. And so on. Creepy ain't it?
Book Review: A Book of Many Distortions
Summary: 5 Stars
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?
Book Review: A Brave Book, A Disturbing Read
Summary: 4 Stars
The novel plays on our most primitive fears; darkness, isolation and the idea that a coherent "center" (spiritual, psychological) does not exist. As Derrida would have it, "authentic" meaning is always an illusion, a product of a maze-like play of differences at the margins. Well, that idea alone is not enough to commend the book; but for me, Danielewski invests the various narratives with enough wit, drive and strangeness to make it worthwhile. The ghosts of "Pale Fire", "Tristram Shandy" and "Gravity's Rainbow" haunt Danielewski's pages and although "House of Leaves" falls short of such exalted standards, I cannot accept that it's a merely an overhyped piece of fluff. I found the actual experience of reading the book to be utterly disconcerting, the real stuff of nightmares.Book Review: A Colossal Waste of Time
Summary: 1 Stars
The comparison of this book to the Blair Witch Project is not inaccurate, in that it tries to be innovative and creative but fails horribly, and only ends up being rather empty and unsatisfying.To begin with, the idea of a fictional study based on make-believe tapes of the Navidson record, is new and interesting. Execution of it, however, falls far far short of good story telling. The meat of the story takes up only a small portion of the book. The rest of the space in the book is filled with journal type entries of a character called Johnny Truant (nothing to do with the house), and intermissions of junk that have again, nothing to do with the story. Danielewski wants you to know that he's capable of quoting Jung, Freud, Homer, and in different languages, too.
Most people who tell me they've read the book and liked it, have enjoyed it because it's an innovative and "hip", bauhaus attempt at presenting a story. They also like it because of the superfluous material. Sort of like, "if it's hard to understand, it must be good".
However, this book isn't so hard to understand. It's simply tedious to read. It never picks up, never gets scary or creepy, and never fills the hunger a discerning reader feels when s/he picks up a book. If anything, the subplots distract like hell, and Danielewski's "gimmick" attempts at creating certain effects, like clever text placement, upside words, mirror-imaged paragraphs, annoy more than anything else.
Now if I can just find that receipt so I can return it...
Book Review: A Complex Journey Without Understanding
Summary: 1 Stars
I could easily understand and interpret the material I was reading without a doubt, however the books itself was empty. I failed to really grasp the meaning which the book represented, and truthfully I thought the novel lacked something other than dullness. When I first started reading the book my first impression was one that was dark and unkind, the book was boring me to tears. I set the book aside, then a few weeks later I decided that I should give the book another try and I did so without hesitation. I read a little further, and then a little further and then I came to the books end. I still, till this day cannot tell anyone what it was about other than it is about a man who moves into his dream home in the quiet country side of virginia with his lovely family. The house begins to grow and suddenly the world around them becomes dark, beings are following them, beasts with long claws stalking them to their graves. Nice story line, I have read about such things before. The complex idea of the house growing has been used before in Stephen King's Rose Red which was a great movie, on ABC. However the idea was odd yet over done. Read something a little more moving and intellectual, anything by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecarft is good.