House of Leaves

By Mark Z. Danielewski

Book Overview

THE MIND-BENDING CULT CLASSIC ABOUT A HOUSE THAT'S LARGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE - A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel.

''Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent--it renders most other fiction meaningless." --Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho

"This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore." --Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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 following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth--musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies--the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.

Now made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged. Similarly, the cultural fascination with House of Leaves remains as fervent and as imaginative as ever. The novel has gone on to inspire doctorate-level courses and masters theses, cultural phenomena like the online urban legend of "the backrooms," and incredible works of art in entirely unrealted mediums from music to video games.

Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story--of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375703764
• ISBN13: 9780375703768
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 736 Pages
• Weight: 2.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

This is my second copy of this book.

I bought a used copy of this book over 10 years ago and fell in love with it. A heartbreaking book that’s also the scariest thing I’ve ever read, “House of Leaves” is a truly unique book that’s unlike anything I had read before or have read since. The unique formatting shouldn’t scare anyone off, nor should the extensive use of footnotes (just take your time with them if you’re struggling). It’s a book that you can read again and again and still discover nuances you’d missed. I recently misplaced my beloved used copy and my bookshelf has felt “wrong” ever since. I just purchased a second copy, which I’ve never done with a book before. Give this book a shot: you won’t regret it.

Illiterate Clickbait

A story is a story is a story. Playing games with the typography, perhaps thinking and intending to convey perhaps something in an n-dimensional space becomes annoying to a reader after just enough repetition to trip the 'enjoyable' breaker. There is an Eastern European pastry called "Tsimmis." It is made with prunes and other natural fillings. This book is a Tsimmis.

4 stars

HOUSE OF LEAVES by Mark Z. Danielewski I don’t know what possessed me to choose this 700+ page tome as my first book for 2024, but I do love a challenge… Reading this was a bizarre (mind f*ck) experience. Not only was the text formatting all over the place (literally sideways, diagonal, upside down and backwards) the footnotes were a separate, tangent filled story on their own. Oh, and if you can read music that comes in handy! This isn’t a book you can read quickly, it demands your attention and patience. You will have to work for the story. In some instances you’ll be flipping back to re-read previous sections. In other chapters you’ll want to add margin notes or fill in blanks. Then the last bit there’s a message to decode. Bless the interwebs for providing the answers for my queries! In short, I enjoyed this. It’s not particularly scary or suspenseful, but I appreciate the author’s meticulous effort in creating such a labyrinthine story. Sure, it’s pretentious and gimmicky, but I didn’t mind it. This book might not be for you, but it was for me. Rating: 4/5 ⭐️

Terrifying

I haven't even finished this book yet and I know it's waiting for me, like a beast in the corner.

Immersive & Unique

I really enjoyed the multiple storylines present in this novel. I have never experienced a book like this before and recommend it to others. I did not find this as difficult of a read as people make it out to be. It’s a book that encompasses many themes, emotions, and can mean something different to everyone who reads it.

Lost, and these shadows keep on changing...

How does one describe a book like this? Start here: "House of Leaves" is a book that's bigger on the inside than it is outside. It isn't a book to be read from the first page to the last -- It's more a story to be explored, and it's a story about exploration. In nearly every aspect, how you read the book is a direct reflection of what's going on in the story at that point. The story itself is complex. It's written on one level like an academic text, distant and carefully-worded, but on another level like a person's diary, full of intimate details and rambling passages. The academic portion is by an author we know only as Zampano, and it's an analysis of a film, "The Navidson Record," about a family who moves into a new house, and the house begins to change around them. First it changes in subtle ways, adding a quarter-inch to the interior dimensions without adding anything to the outside dimension. Like the book itself, the house is larger inside than out...MUCH larger, as the family discovers when new hallways are discovered where none should be, and a door appears in the living room which leads to untold depths. The house seems to be unsteady, changing itself from moment to moment, and it begins to consume the lives of the people living in it. As if that's not enough, there's the additional layer of story of the young man who finds the fragments of Zampano's book after Zampano has died, and assembles it, making additional notes on sections, many of which branch into detailed descriptions of his own life and problems. This young man, Johnny Truant, becomes every bit as important to the story as the Navidsons and the house they live in, as elements of that story tie back into his story. And then there's how the story is told, which in this case is every bit as important as the story itself. You'll start the book at the first page and everything looks normal enough. Perhaps you'll notice a few oddities in the early chapters, but for the most part you're still comfortable. Then it starts doing unexpected things. Footnotes refer to additional footnotes which refer to previous footnotes. You may find yourself following one note through several pages, only to find another note leading you back to where you started, moving backward and forward through the book to follow the trail. Then the text itself starts shifting around, pages printed upside-down or sideways or diagonally or backwards... sometimes several of these combined onto a single page. You'll have to physically turn the book this way and that to be able to read everything. Pacing changes with the story as well. Sometimes things are happening fast, and you'll read at a breakneck pace, 50 pages in 10 minutes or less. At other times, you're forced to linger over the same three or four pages for half an hour to catch the nuances of meaning contained there. And all of it, every bit, is tailored to reflect what's going on in the story in how you're reading it. Put simply, this is

A wholly remarkable book, but not for everyone

The other reviews listed here give a pretty good impression of what the book is: its layered plots, its broad scope, its unconventional conventions. And people love it or hate it. A surefire sign of great art is that it arouses passion, and whether that passion is in support of the work or in its derision is immaterial. That's my opinion, but be warned: House of Leaves certainly isn't for everyone.There are a lot of people, traditionalists, die-hard Hawthorne and Melville fans, who will dismiss this novel as a pile of post-modernist putrescence. That's fine -- its very creative and pretty out-there, both in its concept and its approach. Those who do dare to pick it up, be sure to have about a week set aside to be consumed by this thing.It's a dense book. Very dense. I have read it several times, very closely, and I know that I've only seen a third of what's there. Everything has something to do with something else -- there are no insignificant details, no fluff, in this book. And the overall effect of the plethora of STUFF here is remarkable.You may not be sure of everything that's in there, but you intuit it. You start to get the feeling that Johnny Truant warns you about in the very beginning. As you give yourself over to the book, as you get absorbed into its world, Truant's paranoia creeps off the page and into the reader. It's scary because of the layers, and each voice's belief that the story it tells about is fiction; The Navidson house seems an awful dream, Zampanó approaches the film as fiction, Johnny doesn't know what to think -- he's just engrossed in this bizarre world, trying to put it all together and make sense of it, and "The Editors" raise questions as to whether Mr. Truant is even a real person. The reader, meanwhile, takes on much the same job as Johnny, trying to piece it all together, to find some hidden detail that will unlock these stories, tell us whether they really are fictional. As a reader, you start to doubt. The world gets that shimmer. And at the very end, you realize what's been going on. It's scary while it's happening, but ultimately it's pretty darn funny, as well; the real world is just another layer to this book.The book asks more of the reader than any ordinary novel; you have to work with it, jump backwards and forwards to reacquaint yourself with some clue, read with a suspicious eye, sometimes set it aside and think on it. In the end, though, it's a gripping experience that's very repeatable and worthwhile. Like everything in the novel, there's something there -- it's just tough to put your finger on it.

What's with all these stuffy reviewers?

I don't get the nasty tone of some of the reveiwers of this book. I loved it. I could not stop reading it. I was totally taken in by the recurring themes, the metaphors, the language, the characters, the mystery, the bizarreness of the whole thing. The book made me question how I read, what I read, what text means, what words on the page mean and reflect. It was a tremendously moving and disturbing read. Don't listen to all the cranky people who've rated this lower than 4 stars (unless you think you're getting the next Stephen King novel). Buy this book, think about it, let it settle in and mess with your mind a little.