Tell Me! House of Leaves?

[thebitterguy]

Anyone out there read House of Leaves? After a recent RPG.net thread inspired by a recent XKCD, I'm interested in the book, but I'd like to get some verification as to what people think of it.

Comments

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

I've seen the play. Wait, that was House of Blue Leaves. Never mind.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

It's excellent. Set aside time to read it; it's not a casual book.

[ludickid.livejournal.com]

It's got some amazingly great qualities, it's ambitious as hell, it takes a lot of chances, and at its best, when the overarching metaphor clicks, it's genuinely creepy and unsettling.

HOWEVER, it definitely suffers from 'First Novel Disease', it's overwritten and terribly pretentious at times, and the sub-narrative can really try your patience.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I was going to offer an opinion, but this says as much as I was going to say. Recommendation: borrow from library, at least to try before you buy.

[thebitterguy]

That was what I tried first, but the MPL seems to not have it on their shelves.

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

It's a good horror novel, once you scrape away all the crap. The overall feeling I get is of a novelist who using typography to hide the insecurities he has about his text.

[srhall79.livejournal.com]

LJ ate my first comment.

I enjoyed it. It's not an easy read, with about three naratives going on at once. My sleep cycle was pretty messed up while I was reading it, which led to me dozing while reading on my lunch hour. This resulted in some pretty fucked up dreams and half-awake thoughts... might have added to the experience, really.

I'd recommend borrowing it from a library; it's a bit different from a regular novel, so harder to say whether it will click for you.

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

Glorious.

A new and innovative approach to words as art, rather than merely the conveyance for ideas. For example, in places where things are getting hectic and somewhat frantic, the layout shifts so that it's just a few words on a page at a time, literally causing you to race through turning the pages, instilling a frantic feeling in the action of reading to match the narrative.

Beautifully immersive. I cannot recommend it enough.

Joe

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

I loved the part where the centipedes ate the guy's brain.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

It's over-clever and under-compelling, but there's some real good stuff down there if you can stick it out.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

I've got a review over at my apresvie journal, back a ways, I'd hunt you down the link but I'm lazy.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

It's not perfect by any means, but it really is a fascinating example of ergodic writing/publishing and a compelling (if slow-paced) horror novel in its own right. Definitely recommended.

(His second novel, though, is utter pants.)

[mytholder.livejournal.com]

What he said.