By Jordan Nichols–

Although there are truly thousands of opinions and perspectives on this novel and its meanings, there is really no right way to explain “House of leaves?” Mark Z. Danielewski’s  novel is one you pick up for the tantalizing look and you›re hooked just reading the introduction. The riveting contents will capture you immediately and keep you interested with the various facts and visual aesthetic appeal. Often compared to “The Blair Witch Project” due to its convincingly jumbled format, cult following and urban legend status, House of Leaves has been staple reading for lovers of alt-horror since its publication in 2000. And for good reason.

Within the first ten pages, readers will find themselves captivated by the novel›s challenging aspects – such as the author writing “This is not for you.”  Even though the book itself might look a bit intimidating due to the page number and partially confusing syntactic structure, the intrigue of multiple narratives twining together binds the reader to the page. The challenge is in the author›s choice to create secondary, even tertiary,  stories in accompanying columns and footnotes. Danielewski may not be the first to push the edge of reader engagement with his intentional obfuscation, but he does it with unusual verve and panache, pushing readers into Lovecraftian psychological horror territory. Readers will close the book questioning the definition of concepts like space and time while trying to decide what perspectives are still intact.

The main narrative is about an actual house, which should be a sturdy structure, but is actually a constantly growing life force. The narrator attempts to document the constant evolution of the labyrinthine structure with growing unease. The house adds new rooms and corridors of it›s own accord, expanding and contracting viscerally. This story is paired with that of Johnny Truant as he unfolds the history of the house and all its secrets. He does this while trying to find himself in the journey.  The complicated theories of what is and isn’t real are explored, but not answered, thus leaving the readers to answer it themselves and forcing them to challenge their ideas of fact and truth in the process. 

The novel is full of different types of documents and various styles, stories and references to further support ideas and morals throughout the overall story. The reader is able to find photographs and depictions of the house in a variety of viewpoints to help with the image of its instability (very possibly birthing the name of the book considering a leaf). The book also includes mythological stories as well as celebrity quotes and textual references. To step back from the book and look at the overall effect is like walking into the room of a patient in an insane asylum, where the walls have been covered with newspaper clippings, photographs and maps. All of which have pins sticking out of them and are connected by a single winding string. The book feels like the manic diary of someone who realizes that his hallucinations have become real. 

“House of Leaves” is the very definition of weird; and yet one of the most interesting and psychologically boundary pushing novels someone can read. The book is bound to draw in the daring, the intrigued, the detectives, the escape artist, and of course the avid writers, though very nearly anyone could find more than a few reasons to be infatuated with each and every part.  The book truly is a great read, and you’ll walk away from it with more questions than answers even 12 years after its release.

Now that he’s back with “The Fifty-Year Sword,” released originally in a tiny print run from a Dutch publisher, will readers still be up to Danielewski’s challenging style? Will they be presented with as many literary puzzles in his latest strange novella? Widely praised overseas for its clever artwork and haunting dialogue, “The Fifty-Year Sword” is another border-pushing book that leverages its expansive writing against the tone of an oral story. Five nameless narrators tell their tale to five nameless children, in a round-robin fashion in an attempt to capture the shivers of a campfire story. If Danielewski’s magical realism serves him as well in “The Fifty-Year Sword” as it has in “House of Leaves”, reader could find themselves reviewing the new book 12 years after its American release also.

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Photo courtesy Random House