House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
I really wanted to like this. And I did, to a point. But the book is far more impressive and an academic exercise than as something to be read. That said, others I’ve talked with with think it’s the best book EVAR!
There are about three stories here. A slacker apprentice tattooist is looking for an apartment. His friend’s neighbor dies, leaving a vacancy. The friend’s neighbor has no friends or relatives, so the landlord calls Goodwill to haul his stuff away. The slacker and his friend ransack the place first and carry away a chest that contains an unpublished manuscript that is a scholarly examination of a documentary film. The film was created by an award winning photographer and is ostensibly about the move from big city life to suburban life and how that affects family, etc. But the house they move into turns out to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. Much bigger. Much, much bigger. So much bigger that expeditions get lost. The house affects the residents in different ways at different times.
But don’t forget that most of the text is the examination of the film, not what’s actually happening. Then the slacker’s story is told as footnotes to the paper (in Courier typeface). He’s really a whining whinger and I finally couldn’t take any more so I skipped most of it.
Stylistically, the book really is remarkable, and must have taken a way long time to write. Much of it is unexplained. For example, why does the word “house” always appear in blue? Why are the struck out passages and the word “minotaur” in red? Some of it is very clever indeed. Like when the expedition is being chased (or thinks it’s being chased) there are fewer words on the page (sometimes only one) making the reader turn the pages fast to keep up with the action. When space, time, and gravity are distorted, the words appear at jaunty angles on the page.
While I can appreciate what’s done here, it didn’t really work for me. I found the digressions into etymology and psychology tedious (remember, it’s ostensibly a research paper). But to give credit where it’s due, it’s a remarkable book. It just wasn’t for me.
