hbomb's Full Review: Mark Z. Danielewski and Zampano - House of Leaves
After being utterly blown away with this, a friend of mine lent me his copy of House of Leaves swearing up and down that I needed to read it. Finding it hard to resist a review like that, I bumped it up the long list of books I'm trying to read and dug into it right after I finished my last one. Along with my friends rating, there was a nice little quote by Lethem (who if you've read my reviews you know I respect the hell out of) and that more or less sealed the deal. Well, little did I realize this would be probably the weirdest book I've ever read.
First off, the format of the book itself is very unique. It is a massive paperback, with over 200 pages of Appendixes, which is very odd for a fiction book. Throughout the book, the format of the text itself changes. It starts off normal enough, but then slowly deteriorates into a chaotic jumble of text. All throughout the book the word "house" is highlighted in bold blue ink. There are different type faces used throughout the entire novel. There are pages where there are only a few, if any words. At points, complete gibberish is being run down the sides or across the center of the text. The weirdest of all, is probably the pages with the mirror reflections of the text on the opposite page, transposing the words in reverse. While this weird approach made it very difficult to read at points, it somehow worked. Normally this would just aggravate me, but here it truly added to the plot.
The plot is nearly equally crazy. At the surface, the book is meant to be a documentary written by a blind old man about a video that was created called the "The Navidson Record". The old man was found dead in his room by Johnny Truant, who is a tattoo apprentice with some very interesting tales to tell. Truant basically finds the old man's notes and papers in a box, and becomes fascinated with it and decides to try to put it together. His efforts basically are the book.
Now, this is where the layers of the book come into play. You have Truant, a self proclaimed drug user and obviously not the most reliable of characters, trying to put the book together and adding his own footnotes. From the footnotes, you get a good perspective of his colorful life and also begin to see him going slowly mad for unknown reasons. So this is the first layer of questionable story telling. Then, he is basically retelling the story of an old blind man, that seems to be quite insane himself. While recounting the tale of the video, he quotes numerous sources; the problem is, from the editors and Truant, you realize a lot of these are just flat out lies. Sources that don't even exist. Then to cap it off, the blind mind is writing an analysis about a video. How did he watch this if he's blind?! So you have to ask yourself just how reliable is the old man? And then there's the video itself.
Throughout the book, the old man quotes sources that question whether the video and the horribly events on the video, are even real. The old man seems to truly believe in the video, but there is enough in the book to question if it wasn't contrived. Basically what you are left with is not a single shred of evidence that you can truly trust. Which, in the end, is what makes this book all the more scarier.
The book surrounding the video, can best be described as sort of a written Blair Witch Project. (I think the book was out before the movie though). The video is basically of a very normal house, that a couple lives in. One of the couple just happens to be a world famous photographer, so he decides to video tape every aspect of their new home, setting up cameras everywhere that turn on because of motion detectors. Everything is ordinary enough until they discover their house is actually a quarter of an inch bigger on the inside than the outside. From there, the house begins to almost impossibly transform, and eventually unfolding a truly terrifying event.
If you have an active imagination (and I certainly do) this book is scary as hell. I had nightmares for the first days I was reading it. The terror is truly all in your mind though, because like the Blair With, nothing is actually ever shown. It is all hinted at, alluded at, swiping at their backs only to disappear when they turn around. To me, this is the most terrifying of all because it is all mental. The problem is, the book itself sabotages the efforts. While at points, the written tricks with the words does intensify the confusion and terror, in places it utterly ruins it. Just when your imagination is flowing, and you are left on the edge of your seat, you'll have two chapters of very dry analysis by the old man. Normally when authors leave you hanging like that, they at least cut to something adding to the plot. However, here, you are basically almost left stagnating, and you sort of lose the imagination flow you had. I found this to be very annoying at points.
Overall though, this was still a great book. The different tales being spun weaves in pretty well, and I was suitably scared. A big huge warning here though. If you are a reader that wants the details laid out to you, this is not for you at all. Everything is left to your imagination here. But if that is what you like, then this is an absolute must read.
The textbook, House of Leaves : A Novel, by Mark Z. Danielewski, available in Paperback. Published by: Random House, Inc.. Edition: . ISBN10: 037...More at Textbooks.com
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.