My thoughts:
This is probably not going to be very long because, frankly, I don't know quite what to write. How to review a book that I liked and found very interesting, yet still gave me a headache every time I read it and has still left me scratching my head? I'm not sure. House of Leaves is literally a labyrinth. Yes, there is an entire chapter that is actually a labyrinth...on the page. What can I say? The book is really an enigma. I still don't know what the truth is, or who was actually telling the story, and this would normally piss me off. But ironically, it just made me more intrigued. Even though I finished the book, I'm still going to look over it more and I found a helpful page on Mark Danielewski's blog. The page is Exploration Z and it's The Idiot's Guide to House of Leaves. I'm going to explore this page and see if it can help me figure a few things out. I know that this review has not really given much insight into if the book is good or not and I apologize for that. Let me just say again...I liked it (4 stars on Goodreads), it's confusing, it gets the reader thinking (I think that's where the headache comes from). Okay, now I'm getting a headache writing this review. ;O)
About the book:
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children.
Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.
The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.
Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.
