House of Leaves
Book description
“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times
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…
Why read it?
18 authors picked House of Leaves as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This book lives in my Brain rent-free, ironic since my brain is also not a space in which anyone should take Up residence.
I love the layers of narraTors, Johnny, Zampanò, and Navidson, all of Them unreliable, telling lies from cOnscious design, from iNability to face the truth, from shifting realities. Maybe one day I'll find my way through to someone who loves my ironieS.
From Zilla's list on books where the narrator won't stay out of the story.
House of Leaves is an intellectual challenge in itself.
Not only does the text flip back and forth between our narrator’s life and the mysterious manuscript he found in a dead man’s apartment but the actual form changes with text written in color, backwards, upside down and even taking the shape of the very situations the words are describing. Making sense of what is happening amongst all these layers tests your brain’s ability to keep it all straight and will leave you with your own theory as to what is really happening in the House of Leaves. And that’s what…
If you’ve ever explored an abandoned building, you know what it feels like to approach House of Leaves. This book clocks in at over 700 pages, and it took me a while to work up the courage to dive in.
Danielewski’s groundbreaking horror novel strips away the safety of just reading a story by dragging you right across the book’s threshold.
House of Leaves is a difficult book to summarize, but one of the chief plotlines follows The Navidson Record, a documentary about a family’s increasingly strange experiences in their house. The structure has dimensions that don’t add up, including…
From Sara's list on thriller and horror with “House” in the title.
House of Leaves might need no introduction, but I’ll never shy away from giving it one.
This behemoth is a faux-nonfiction book. Its gloomy undertones and pervasive sense of wrongness are inimitable. When reading House of Leaves, you feel as though something is not quite right—something hideous, inimical, and insidious is lurking, and soon that very thing will come for you.
I still think of those long, dark hallways and endless wandering. A masterclass.
From Adam's list on depressive reads that are free of platitudes.
House of Leaves is understandably a divisive book. Some horror fans swear by it; others can’t make it through the first ten pages. And then there are those who don’t claim it’s horror at all. All points are valid and ultimately meaningless.
The central conceit of the story is that a family discovers that their house’s physical measurements are bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. This being a physical impossibility, they enlist help as the house evolves. Danielewski plays with space in a metaphysical sense. Empty voids exist in the dark cracks of our physical world.…
From Nick's list on that will haunt you for life.
House of Leaves is a cult classic for many reasons: its mad use of graphology, its inventive narrative style, the sheer complexity of its ideas.
At its heart, though, it is a perfectly told work of horror. The main narrative follows a family moving into a house that is not quite right, and the slow and masterful sense of disquiet that Danielewski injects into the characters will have you questioning not just what’s going on in the story, but all the things you took for granted in real life.
You won’t look at your own house the same way…
From Nicholas' list on horror that build a deep and unshakeable sense of dread.
I reviewed House of Leaves several times before the book finally revealed itself to me.
While on its surface, it’s a simple work of fiction, it carries the weight of something with pressing importance and unhinged meaning. Accepting the book and its sentiments becomes the biggest challenge in getting into it.
The book, just like its subject matter, is a winding journey into the depths of a physical world that none of us can truly grasp.
This book taught me about scope and its ability to challenge a reader more than its own surface-level prose and ideas.
From May's list on unfathomable nightmares.
This is a debut novel that is ridiculously too good to be a debut novel. Due to the hype when it was first published, my deeply contrary self was initially resistant to House of Leaves until it was foisted upon me by a dear friend. I have since foisted it upon many other dear friends and now, dear reader, I humbly foist it upon you. The book is a weird, brilliant, terrifying, heartbreaking Russian doll of a narrative, a story of haunted houses and haunted humans, documented by at least three different and increasingly unhinged narrators, and typeset to manipulate…
From Kirstyn's list on literary horror that will get under your skin.
A difficult book to classify or to describe, it definitely leaves an impression. It’s another sort of haunted house, in which new rooms and passageways inexplicably appear, though the exterior dimensions of the house do not change. Danielewski plays with narrative structure and format, employing an unreliable narrator, copious footnotes, and multiple stories to weave together a compelling novel that leaves you questioning what is real. No description of the book will satisfy; you have to experience this one.
From Louis' list on horror where the world becomes askew.
I was heartened when this book was published and became reasonably popular, showing that unconventional fiction was still alive. Like BS Johnson before him, Danielewski plays not only with the novel’s story structure but with formal elements such as fonts, paragraphs, footnotes, etc., creating a labyrinth of text with clues and blind alleyways for the reader to get lost in.
From Mike's list on experimental stories that have a unique form.
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