Synopses & Reviews
In the New York Times bestseller House of Holes, Nicholson Baker, “one of the most beautiful, original, and ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades” (The New York Times Magazine), returns to the terrain that made him famous with a gleefully provocative, off-the-charts erotic novel that is unlike anything you’ve read—“a filthy tour de force” (Time).Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a hole in a golf course. So begins Nicholson Baker’s fuse-blowing sexual escapade—a modern-day Hieronymous Boschian bacchanal set in a pleasure resort where normal rules don’t apply. House of Holes, one of the funniest and most talked-about books in recent memory, is a gleefully provocative novel sure to surprise, amuse, and arouse.
Review
“Truly uproarious . . . Baker is one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time . . . Readers with a fondness for richly ridiculous diction, witty provocation and graphic sexual prose that celebrates desire, frailty and the comedy of life will not be disappointed.” —Sam Lipsyte, front cover of the New York Times Book Review
Review
“Wild and hallucinatory . . . Full of fearlessness, cheerfulness, wit, and brio.” —Meg Wolitzer, The Washington Post
Review
“Awe-inducing . . . A joyful, almost Chaucerian book . . . Had Dr. Seuss been a slightly insane pornographer, he might have written a book like this.” —Tom Bissell, GQ
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“A sexy, disturbing, funny book: It may also challenge the usual reader of literary novels with its sheer dazzling excess of imagination.” —Kate Roiphe, Slate
Review
“House of Holes is as funny as it is filthy and breathes new life into the tired, fossilized conventions of pornography in a way that suggests a deep, almost scholarly familiarity with the ancient tropes.” —Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine
Review
“[Baker] escorts us through a surprisingly delightful session of all things benevolently sexual—everything’s consensual, of age and legal, even if, in most cases, physically impossible. . . . We’d recommend it to nearly everyone we know, and no one we don’t.” —Tim Grobaty, Contra-Costa Times
Review
“About as fun and thoroughly unpretentious as literature gets.” —Michael Pucci, New York Journal of Books
Review
“A permanent tribute to both the idiocy and surreal inventiveness of sexual desire. . . . Attention must be paid. And laughter must ensue—and rather a lot of it, too.” —Jeff Simon, Buffalo News
Review
“This is a funny, frisky novel that brings sexy back in a way that Justin Timberlake never dreamed.” —Mark Haskell Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
"Truly uproarious . . . Baker is one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time."
Review
“House of Holes is as funny as it is filthy. . . . When he is not writing about sex (and also when he is), Baker is one of the most beautiful, original, ingenious prose stylists to have come along in decades.” —Charles McGrath, The New York Times Magazine
Review
“A funny, frisky novel that brings sexy back in a way that Justin Timberlake never dreamed . . . Reminds us that books can be fun and sexy, that literature can have just as much raw energy and liberating chaos as a good f*ck.” —Mark Haskell Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
“Brilliant, absurd, puerile, depraved, and completely enthralling.” —Steve Almond, The Boston Globe
Review
“A world of universal arousal is common enough in pornography, but Baker has fully realized its comic possibilities . . . [He] can conjure fantastical sexual scenarios and unspool yards of charmingly filthy dialogue.” —Elaine Blair, The New York Review of Books
Review
“Amazing and indispensable.” —Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News
Review
“Truly uproarious . . . Baker is one of the most consistently enticing writers of our time.” —Sam Lipsyte, front cover of The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Nicholson Baker's House of Holes is gleefully provocative, off-the-charts sex novel that is unlike anything you’ve read.
Synopsis
Shandee finds a friendly arm at a granite quarry. Ned drops down a hole in a golf course. So begins Nicholson Baker’s fuse-blowing sexual escapade—a modern-day Hieronymus Boschian bacchanal set in a pleasure resort where normal rules don’t apply. House of Holes, one of the most talked-about books in recent memory, is a gleefully provocative novel sure to surprise, amuse, and arouse.
About the Author
Nicholson Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and House of Holes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Maine with his family.