House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski

Okay this is my first book review so bear with me... House of Leaves is an easy book, please don't be put off (as have some of my friends!) by the sheer volume of it. If you love Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, Dave Eggers, and Lovecraft you will definitely go for this, if not then I urge you to read it anyway. The plot starts from the first person perspective of Johnny Truant, a tattoo parlour assistant living on the fringes of an L.A alternative scene whose life is presented as having difficult and confusing relationships with the people around him. When searching for a new apartment his friend Lude takes him to the apartment of Zampano, an apparently ...  Read the complete review

I bought 'House of Leaves' after reading the positive reviews by 'zusy' and 'richardpart' on dooyoo. It's an intriguing book, and just leafing through the pages gives you an impression of the bizarre story that you're in for. While pages in some sections of the book carry several dense blocks of text, some of which are printed upside-down or back-to-front, pages in other sections of the book carry relatively few words, some pages have only half a word on them! Author Mark Z. Danielewski combines elements from modern urban legends with an innovative and intelligent design, to produce a remarkable, unique first novel. The book ...  Read the complete review

"House of Leaves" has to be the most amazing book I've ever read. Now, I have to confess I don't read as much as I used to (I think all the studying put me off!), and I am extremely picky about my fiction. I generally prefer non-fiction - a story has to really be something pretty special for me to get into it. I'm a bit nervous about writing this op - it's my first book op, and I really want to do this book justice. I discovered "the book" in a roundabout fashion. I have a rather splendid, if somewhat bizarre album from a singer named Poe, called "Haunted". It's a fantastic album (op coming as soon ...  Read the complete review

When self-proclaimed sicko Bret Easton Ellis (author of 'American Psycho') says he may never recover from reading such a scary book, you know you have to try it for yourself. In his review of Mark Z. Danielewski's debut novel, Ellis goes further and states that it is "...Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent - it renders most other fiction meaningless...I feel privileged to be among its first readers. Will I ever recover?" This book has been hyped up in America as the text equvallent of the smash-hit film 'The Blair Witch Project'. The publishers have even gone so far as to ...  Read the complete review

I bought this book after reading a review in the Independent on Sunday and how glad I am that I did. I think this is one of the strangest books I have read for a long long time - but one that I found I couldn't put down. Even the basic plot is difficult to explain ... but here goes. Johnny Truant (who narrates the book) comes across the papers and writings of a blind loner called Zampano, who has recently died. These papers and writing are about a documentary film 'The Navidson Record' shot by a famous photo journalist about his new home in the country. The house is not all it seems with strange doors appearing leading to endless corridoors and ...  Read the complete review