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House of Leaves: A Novel

by Mark Z. Danielewski

House of Leaves: A Novel Cover

Staff Pick

"Saints be praised, this is the best book of the new millennium. A veritable tour de force. Pynchon meets Stephen King meets Robert Hughes meets Borges meets Dante. Joycian. Jungian. Mythic. Any clich used by fawning literary critics applies. Yadda Yadda Yadda. Impossible to put down. Impossible to believe it's his first book. I spent several hours trying to figure out if Danielewski was an anagram, which is a fraction of the time I spent deciphering the many anagrams, puzzles, hidden meanings and symbols which make this book so rich. It's an allegory/horror story/love story/philosophical soft porn/psychological thriller. It scared the crap out of me. It made me cry. It filled me with joyous rapture. I stopped eating, sleeping, working, (please ignore that boss) just to finish it. Then I started it again and it's better the second time. Hurrumph. Yammer. Gawk. OK I'm back. It's a book about a guy who finds a manuscript about a film about a family who have moved into a house that is smaller on the outside than it is on the inside. If I told you any more I'd have to kill you (or maybe you'd have to kill me.) I've already said too much."
Recommended by John, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

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, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, 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.

Review:

"An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel...that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted house tale....One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Review:

"[A] wonderful first novel....[F]unny, moving, sexy, beautifully told, an elaborate engagement with the shape and meaning of narrative." Robert Kelly, The New York Times Book Review

Review:

"Danielewski's eccentric and sometimes brilliant debut novel is really two novels....One — the horror story — is a tour-de-force....[T]he novel is a surreal palimpsest of terror and erudition, surely destined for cult status." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"This stunning first effort is destined for fast-track cult status....This work is a kaleidoscopically layered and deconstructed H. P. Lovecraft-style horror story. It hums and resonates with wonder, dread, and insight." Eric Robbins, Booklist

Review:

"Danielewski employs avant-garde page layouts that are occasionally a bit too clever but are generally highly effective....It is simultaneously a highly literary work and an absolute hoot....[P]owerful and extremely original..." Library Journal

Review:

"This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore, put down, or persuasively conclude reading. In fact, when you purchase your copy you may reach a certain page and find me there, reduced in size like Vincent Price in The Fly, still trapped in the web of its malicious, beautiful pages." Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

Review:

"House of Leaves actually gave me nightmares: I had to stop reading it before bedtime. I'm sure klaxons will be set blaring around it and klieg lights will be trained on it, and so they should. Its secrets are rich and obscure. Danielewski's textured novel is about apprehensions, in all senses of the word: to anticipate with dread, to seize, to understand. If you can imagine that Peter Pan's enemy is not Captain Hook but Neverland itself, or that the whale that swallows Jonah is Moby-Dick, you'll begin to appreciate what this book is about. Anticipate it with dread, seize, and understand. A riveting reading experience." Gregory Maguire, author of Lost and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Review:

"A great novel. A phenomenal debut. Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent — it renders most other fiction meaningless. One can imagine Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace bowing at Danielewski's feet, choking with astonishment, surprise, laughter, awe." Bret Easton Ellis

Synopsis:

A family relocates to a small house on Ash Tree Lane and discovers that the inside of their new home seems to be without boundaries.

About the Author

Mark Z. Danielewski was born in 1966. House of Leaves is his first novel.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 12 comments:
Edna Cross, January 26, 2010 (view all comments by Edna Cross)
Creepy funny, scary, intelligent, miserable, & hopeful, this book will make you feel more convoluted than the hundreds of rooms and staircases prone to random expansion that dwell and breath between the covers of this book. The story is personal and engulfing to the point of questionable return on the part of the reader. It seems apparent that Mark Z. Danielewski thought carefully and concisely on how to present this story with as much reality and rapture as possible. It is impossible not to be sucked into this book, and into the minds of the characters who open up to you more intimately than your very lover. This is the deepest and most intensive exploration of any place that I have ever been.
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Aubrey, January 13, 2010 (view all comments by Aubrey)
I hope with all my heart that this remains on bookshelves in stores and libraries forever. This is a book-lovers dream.

House of Leaves is ostensibly about a film (though this is not really true). Perhaps it is really about the nature of our human connection with the things in our lives; whether that thing is a film critique manuscript, a film, a house, or any other drug of choice (all of the above). Its a book about the ever changing, constant turmoil of human life. Its scary as all get out. Its gorgeous, experimental, funny, allegorical, and not easily defined. House of Leaves will be something that you either love with a passion or hate with a passion. Pick this book up and make up your own mind.
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Laura Connor, January 5, 2010 (view all comments by Laura Connor)
I don’t even know where to begin with this novel. It is astounding. It’s such a simple story, compounded by complex fictional analysis throughout, compounded by heavy 2nd story line, which is also a main story line, compounded by interviews, perspectives, and footnotes! Good god, the footnotes! I see parts of this book as a revenge to an old professor Danielewski must have had that was foot-note and credit obsessed. I see Danielewski beaming at how he could take such a simple, short, creepy story and manipulate it to terrifying, gripping, and completely exhausting. I feel in some way that he is laughing at all of his readers for becoming so completely taken by this book. This is a piece of artwork. Utter genius. I felt manipulated, terrified, trapped, and joyous while reading. It affected my dreams, and now whenever I see the word hallway in print it makes me stop. Interrupts my flow of reading just long enough to recognize how thoroughly this book consumed me, changed me. I cannot recommend this book enough. Allow yourself time to read this book. Flip back and forth through every footnote sometimes spanning a leap backwards or forwards by a few hundred pages. Have a notepad at your side to map out the hidden codes inside. This book will consume me again, happily.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375703768
Author:
Danielewski, Mark Z.
Publisher:
Pantheon Books
Introduction:
Truant, Johnny
Location:
New York :
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Poetry (poetic works by one author)
Subject:
Horror
Subject:
Horror fiction
Subject:
Horror tales
Subject:
Experimental fiction
Subject:
Horror - General
Copyright:
Edition Number:
2
Publication Date:
March 7, 2000
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
736
Dimensions:
9.16x7.06x1.26 in. 2.27 lbs.

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