Will I love House of Leaves?

I love this book because it turns reading itself into a haunted space.

House of Leaves doesn’t just tell me something is wrong; it makes me physically experience disorientation on the page. I admire books that take big formal risks and still keep a human pulse underneath the invention.

This one made me feel trapped in a maze made of rooms, footnotes, fear, and obsession, and I mean that as high praise.

I believe this book is one of the classic staples of surreal fiction. Its disjointed, spiraling narrative and sprawling non-linear plot lines challenge the definition of what a ‘book’ is. It uses everything from footnotes to text alignment to color schemes to make the act of reading itself increasingly difficult, which matches the house’s influence on the narrators’ memories and interests.

Reading it for me was like learning Latin or watching Casablanca–it gave context to decades of experimental media inspired by it, from TV shows to DOOM game mods. Love it or hate it, it’s a solid… show more.

A friend complained about being saddled with reading this bible-thick book by a fellow creative writing student on his MA course. Never having heard of it, though I’ve since discovered it’s a major cult favorite, I flicked through it and quickly became intrigued by its faux academic footnotes and citations, quirky layout (pages might contain a single line of text as the narrative accelerates, for instance) and tale of paranormal investigation.

‘Postmodern’, though apt, makes it sound tedious; actually, it’s an intriguing, clever, and in places touching take on the psychic investigator genre, using a myriad of haunted house motifs… show more.

This is a love-it or hate-it novel. Either you find it tiresome, or you give yourself over whole-heartedly to its unique madness. It has at its heart a film, The Navidson Record, a documentary about a photojournalist who moves his family into a pretty house and discovers that the house is bigger on the inside than the outside, and getting bigger.

As he and his friends try to explore the limits of the house, it rearranges itself around them. The film is described in the text by an old man, complete with a mountain of scholarly footnotes by a… show more.

By far the strangest book I have ever read, gaining points on sheer audacity alone, which isn't to say that it doesn't also earn high marks because the readable parts are beautifully written. Describing a book as having "readable parts" infers that other parts are - something different. The most concise and accurate description of House of Leaves is "something different". It features a layering of narrative points of view built upon other narrative points of view, and the reader is repeatedly snatched from one to another with no apparent pattern, rhyme or reason. One day Will Navidson, a Pulitzer… show more.

I found out about this book when a friend urged me not to buy this book because it messed her up. Needless to say, I bought and read it right away, and even though it took me a long time with frequent pauses to get through this behemoth of a book, I understand why my friend said what she said.

Even beyond the striking visuals and the slowly escalating typographic madness (just google it and you’ll know what I mean) a feeling of dread suffuses this novel that stayed with me long after I put it down.

I love this book's weirdness! Danielewski’s paranormal (and unconventional) story permitted me to write what I wanted and forget other people’s expectations about what a novel “should” be. It freed my work to be as strange as it needed to be.

I was unprepared for the surreal brilliance of this book. The novel initially appears to be a work of nonfiction written to deconstruct The Navidson Record, a documentary film that describes an unusual residence in Virginia. This house, owned by Will Navidson and his wife Karen Green, appears to be larger inside than outside. This sounds impossible, of course, but that’s what makes this book so wonderful. No matter how impossible the subject matter may seem, Danielewski’s approach renders even the craziest supernatural plot elements as if they were happening in everyday life. And in this case, everyday life… show more.

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted cult following this terrifying story would soon command. So describes the dust jacket of Mark Z. Danielewski's infamous masterpiece.

A mind-bending collection of found documents, snarky citations, and secret codes. It's been said: you don't read House of Leaves, House of Leaves reads you -- and I couldn't agree more. This book literally made me question reality.

This is a book as sprawling and twisting as the house in question. It’s one people love or hate, or love to hate, but for me, it was an immersive and chilling experience. The idea that a house can grow around you, that you can get trapped and lost within it, is horrifying and yet so attractive. This is one of those novels that gives you those “someone’s behind me” chills until you’re just one huge shivering mass. 

The story and the way that the author tells the story is unsettling in every sense. You never know fully what’s coming.… show more.