The Crabshack Gallery

Recent Reads: House of Leaves

27th February, 2009 - Posted by MashPotato - No Comments

Imagine a book written about a book written about a non-existant documentary filmed about a house… yep, this is House of Leaves ;)

To make that description slightly less confusing, “House of Leaves” is a manuscript written by a blind man, whose death leaves it in the hands of Johnny Truant, a down-and-out tattoo parlour assistant.  The real-life physical book House of Leaves consists of this manuscript, annotated heavily by Johnny Truant, whose unravelling life and growing obsession is revealed in his footnotes.  The manuscript purports to be an academic work on the documentary film The Navidson Report, but this film, as Truant discovers, does not exist, and neither do most of the copious references scattered throughout the work.  The documentary, purportedly by Pulitzer-prize winning photographer Will Navidson, is about the house he and his family move into–a house that is bigger on the inside than its outside.  Just under an inch at first, but soon a hallway of cold darkness appears…

By this point, I’ve either lost you or intrigued you, and that about sums up what I feel about this book.  House of Leaves is an experimental novel–beyond the switches in narrator and story, as well as in tone and style–it plays with your expectations about what novels are.  The typography is odd, in some parts of the book the words take on the appearance of the surroundings (eg. thin columns in the dark hallway), or are positioned to force the reader to read a certain way (eg. holding the book upside-down).  Words are coloured.  Passages are crossed out.  The back contains a mostly nonsensical index.  Some parts have been lost due to Johnny spilling ink on the manuscript.  Yes, it is, in a word, different.

But beyond the interesting writing style, is it good?  In some places, it is absolutely amazing.  I couldn’t convey in my summary how terrifying the hallway is, in its impossibility and pure emptiness, which Danielewski conveys wonderfully.  The sense of loneliness, panic,  and simultaneous agoraphobia/claustrophobia create a mounting horror that lingers–I have to admit it affected my sleep when I read a bit too close to bedtime ;)  As terrifying as it can be, however, there is a deep emotional heft to it.  It’s not just a horror book, it’s about love, relationships, discovery, and all with well-drawn, sympathetic characters.

However, there are some parts I found difficult to muddle through.  Some of these were by design, as the manuscript sometimes goes on and on about theoretical topics (the dryness of which Truant himself comments on).  Some parts, though, I found hard to follow, and these were mostly to do with Truant’s life.  Written in a first-person view, these passages at times transition into a rambling, stream-of-consciousness style that are difficult to understand simply as an English  sentence, and even more so as a sentence trying to convey a meaning beyond the words used.  Perhaps it was just me.  I’m not afraid to admit I probably didn’t grasp everything going on, or the significance of certain events, but things occasionally struck me as abstract for the sake of being abstract, and a little pretentious.

My recommendation for this book is a little different, in that I recommend it if you can accept the odd writing style, which wouldn’t be to everyone’s taste (you’ll probably be able to tell by about page 7, not including the introduction).  It’s a challenging read, and sometimes a little dull, but ultimately very rewarding :)