Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11767 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 736 pages

Synopsis
Johnny Truant, a wild and troubled sometime employee in a LA tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampano, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Report. Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in interviews. Now the Navidsons are household names. Zampano, writing on loose sheets, stained napkins, crammed notebooks, has compiled what must be the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane. But Johnny Truant has never heard of the Navidson Record. Nor has anyone else he knows. And the more he reads about Will Navidson's house, the more frightened he becomes. Paranoia besets him. The worst part is that he can't just dismiss the notebook as the ramblings of a crazy old man. He's starting to notice things changing around him...Immensely imaginative, impossible to put down and impossible to forget, "House of Leaves" is thrilling, terrifying and unlike anything you have ever read before.

From the Back Cover
Johnny Truant, wild and troubled sometime employee in an L.A. tattoo parlour, finds a notebook kept by Zampanr, a reclusive old man found dead in a cluttered apartment. Herein is the heavily annotated story of the Navidson Record.

Will Navidson, a photojournalist, and his family move into a new house. What happens next is recorded on videotapes and in interviews. Now the Navidsons are household names. Zampanr, writing on loose sheets, stained napkins, crammed notebooks, has compiled what must be the definitive work on the events on Ash Tree Lane. But Johnny Truant has never heard of the Navidson Record. Nor has anyone else he knows. And the more he reads about Will Navidson's house, the more frightened he becomes. Paranoia besets him. The worst part is that he can't just dismiss the notebook as the ramblings of a crazy old man. He's starting to notice things changing around him...

Immensely imaginative. Impossible to put down. Impossible to forget. House of Leaves is thrilling, terrifying and unlike anything you have ever read before.

About the Author
Mark Z Danielewski
Mark Z. Danielewski, son of a film director who co-founded the Sundance Film Festival, grew up in Utah, is in his mid-thirties and was educated at Harvard, where he was taught by Harold Bloom. He attended the most prestigious film school in America at the University of Southern California and has written a number of screenplays. His sister, Poe, is a cult rock star in the States.

Customer Reviews

Beautifully Executed
I'm not sure what I can say about this tremendous novel that hasn't already been said. It's genuinely chilling despite nothing much actually happening - the interweaving layers of commentary, analysis and gradual descent in madness are executed beautifully, with even the layout of the book itself becoming part of the tale.

It's not an easy read - dense and thickly annotated with a vast number of real and invented references, and a Byzantine, tightly interlinked series of footnotes and appendices. All of this is part of the execution though for the book is only part novel... it's also part code and part puzzle. There are hidden messages and secrets contained throughout the text, some of which are comical and others which hint at darker truths and revelations. Indeed, like the two protagonists in the book, you could easily go mad trying to dissect the winding and twisted passages within.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

An amazing journey through the mental labyrinth
A challenging book on so many levels, it is not only technically complex but the myriad stories have you swinging back and forth. To me this book acted than more than just a novel, it raises psychological questions, it challenges the perceptions we have and it makes you delve ever deeper to try and understand what is happening.
This book can and will take over your life, searching out the cyphers, trying to find out what in the story is real and what is not. So don't expect this book to remain neat and tidy, you will find yourself scrawling on the pages or marking out letters that could possibly be part of a cyphers.
I also love the multiple aspects of this book, I bought POE's album "Haunted" a long time before I read the book, I latter found out that the album and the book are intertwined - Poe is Mark's sister. So further listening and reading are continually opening more doors with this book.
Enjoy it!

a masterpiece
Those who conclude that House of Leaves is "style over substance" would do well to either re-read the novel with a great deal more care, or else enroll on a literature course where they can have meaning spoon-fed to them.

Before I go on, I should state categorically that I believe Postmodernism to be a frustrating, incoherent and untenable philosophical stance. It works well as a critique of other theories, but can not stand on its own without burying its head in the sand and refusing to become involved in debate. It has also had a devastating impact on art, resulting in the rising stock of the likes of Tracey Emin. In the instance of House of Leaves, however, Postmodernism served me up a dish of cold whoop-ass.

Mark Danielewski makes the trendy-authors over whom Students everywhere collectively orgasm, such as Palahniuk and Vonnegut, look decidedly amateurish. The depth of this book is frankly unparalleled in any modern effort. His grasp and elucidation of philosophical, mathematical, scientific and emotional concepts is breathtaking, and for the reader who reads it thoroughly, the book holds rich rewards.

It also helps a lot that the horror story aspect of the novel is executed superbly and sends more tingles down your spine than (some inappropriate analogy). The Navidson Project feels like an intelligent person's Blair-Witch-Project. The 5-and-a-half-minute hallway alone beats the living hell out of insufferably melodramatic teens throwing tantrums and maps.

This book knows that it is a masterpiece, and that it would stir a cult following. I would recommend it to anybody who is prepared to work to understand and appreciate great art. And to anybody who has a copy of Radiohead's Kid A.