This week, I finally finished reading House Of Leaves. I say “finally” because I’ve had the book for years and started reading it two or three times and never made it past page 60 or so. This time around, I was very taken by the unusual way in which this book is written and thought it was really ingenious.
It’s about a guy (Johnny Truant) who finds a manuscript written by another guy (Zampanó) about a documentary film by yet another guy (Navidson). Truant’s comments the manuscript and so his story is told in footnotes within the Zampanó manuscript. It’s really captivating how one story influences the other, but even if the manuscript had been the only story in this book, I still would’ve liked it a lot.
The manuscript is basically a thesis on a made-up movie, which can dissect all the little details about the story, and it does it so well. This made-up movie, if it were made into a Hollywood movie, would probably be too scary for me to watch. A mix of Cloverfield and The Ring possibly, but good. It’s about house that suddenly out of nowhere has an extra hallway that leads into a dark nothingness. The house is bigger on the inside than on the outside. And a lot of other creepy things are going on there…
If you want to read the book despite my badly written review, this is the version I have:
House of Leaves [Amazon.com]
But they also make a version that’s in color with color photographs in the Appendix:
House of Leaves [Amazon.com].
House of Leaves Fan Site
Interview with Mark Z. Danielewski [MP3]
