House of Leaves

Mark Danielewski

Sometimes you come across a book that is so different, so thought-provoking, so inventive, that it is impossible to classify. Such a work is Mark Z. Danielewski's stunning debut novel. Horror? Mystery? Family drama? I'll cop out with psychological thriller, and try to give you a more general picture of what it's all about.

Imagine Jack Kerouac toying around with the gothic 'bad house' book. David Foster Wallace drops by. "What you doin', Jack? A gothic? Heyyy!" They toss a few ideas back and forth. There's a knock at the door. "Hi, guys," says Stephen King, "heard you got a gothic goin' down..."

And that's it in a few lines. Will Navidson, Pulitzer-winning photojournalist, moves his family from the city to Virginia in an attempt to save his ailing relationship with his wife. Things seem to be going just fine in their rustic abode when strange things start to happen. The walls of their house start to assume odd dimensions. A corridor appears from nowhere in their living room. A preliminary survey reveals more corridors, rooms and staircases going off at all sorts of angles and to all sorts of depths (and heights). And there's a strange growling noise. With the help of family and friends, Navidson sets out to explore the mysterious labyrinth and make a documentary - The Navidson Record - of his findings. Needless to say, this single-mindedness does not sit well with his wife.

Meanwhile...

Following the death of an old recluse, the annotated story of The Navidson Record comes into the possession of Johnny Truant, a going-nowhere kid who ekes out a living in an LA tattoo parlour. Truant is unfamiliar with The Navidson Record, but the more he delves into the annotated commentary, the more his life starts to spiral out of control.

So there are basically two stories on the go here, as outlined above. But House of Leaves is far more than just your average bad house schlock. Oh sure, it'll spook the hell out of you, but the scale of inventiveness is breathtaking: fonts and page-setting galore; footnotes that lead you through page after page and back to your starting point; seven or eight different languages (most with translation!); even a page in Braille, a page of music; text that reads upwards, text that reads back-to-front, upside down... This is as close to interactive as a traditional book can get.

The quality of the writing is of the highest order. Passages which will chill your soul co-exist happily with passages of the utmost tenderness and the most brutal description (check out the shipwreck scene). With so many plates to keep spinning, it would be easy to lose focus, but Danielewski proves himself a master at keeping everything under control. The blending of the parallel stories is particularly well done.

And it's unputdownable. I can't recall the last time such a big book (709 + xxiii pp., 9¼" x 6", 2½ lbs) held me in its thrall. It's no exaggeration to say that Danielewski is pushing out the frontiers of what the novel can do. And he succeeds. This is a book you really want to read if you want to see the sort of direction literature might take in the 21st century. Highly recommended.