House of Leaves is a highly unusual book. One of the most surprising things is that the publisher was prepared to indulge a comparatively young debut author and agree to put out a book that plays so extensively with the layout of the words on the page. The sheer power of the House of Leaves, however, more than justifies the decision.
House of Leaves — like The Book with No Name and John Dies at the End — started out life as an internet serial. The latter works are crazy, surreally humorous horrors, whose charm lies mainly in their zany narrative rather than the quality of their writing. MZD’s book, on the other hand, is first and foremost a wonderful piece of writing. It’s a horror — or perhaps a love story hiding within a horror’s clothes — and it is engrossing, archly satirical and at times extremely creepy. It certainly isn’t trying to be funny.
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielwski
House of Leaves is not a work to be taken lightly. It presents itself as a manuscript gathered — and heavily annotated — by a tattoo artist. This guy claims to have assembled the manuscript by piecing together the notes of a blind man who died in disturbingly inexplicable circumstances. These notes take the form of a detailed and scholarly critique of a movie called The Navidson Record. This in turn is a documentary made by a cameraman, one Will Navidson, of his increasingly peculiar new house. The only trouble is that the tattoo artist can find no suggestion that the movie ever existed.
The house at the centre of all these layers is a dark, forbidding place that appears to be playing games with the Navidson family. First certain areas seem to change size and depth, and then entire new sections appear, leading into… well. I don’t want to spoil anything.
There are a lot of different layers to the book, even before the Navidson House starts shifting space around. The story weaves around between them deftly, dripping with menace and dark glory. Then the book itself starts playing with, changing page orientation, fooling around with the use of space on the page, sometimes taking you into claustrophobia, and other times into agoraphobia. It becomes as much part of the experience as the words themselves. It’s not always easy, either physically or in a literary sense, but it’s well worth the effort. The result is one of the genuine masterworks of dark fantasy, a dazzling but truly horrible dream, powerful and unforgettable.
book itself requires effort to read – the words are not always printed in regular blocks, or even in the same orientation on the page. The effort is worth it, however; this is a masterwork of dark fantasy that reads like a truly horrible yet dazzling dream, and carries just as much power. It’s the opposite of easy reading, for sure, but it will stay with you.
This was the first book I ever read that actually frightened me. I remember reading it in my car by flashlight one night while picking up a friend, and I actually got that whole cliche tickle on the back of my neck. When, oh when is his next book coming out?
One of my favourite books ever.
@Emily: He released a second book, Only Revolutions. I thought it was absolutely unreadable twaddle (which, admittedly, was the opinion a lot of my friends expressed about House of Leaves.
This is indeed a deeply weird book. Fascinating, and yet there’s a level on which I still can’t quite shake the feeling it’s a practical joke by MZD :-)
Of course, if you have read HoL already, you have to see: http://xkcd.com/472/
I don’t normally read horror, but someone bought this for me and I loved it. Absolutely brilliant, and genuinely scary. I used to have dreams about new rooms appearing in my parents’ house, and this put me right back into that head space, and new and worrying ways.
Are there any angels in the book? I am looking for a book that has angel(s) in it, which is called “House of …” but I don’t remember the author…
Please help!
I’ll send you an Email, Nadja. But in case anyone else is wondering the same thing, no, there’s no angels in House of Leaves — not openly, anyway.
I’m a Philosophy major, and I cannot even begin to explain how many times in a year I try to weave this book into papers. Still, after so many years, I have not found a way to do it any justice. Brilliant book, and even still intense for someone that has read it multiple times and sat writing out how things interconnect. Should get a new copy because of my own additions I’ve added.