937. House of Leaves

House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski
2000
Around 710 pages

It's been awhile since we have had a metafiction entry on the List, and it's been even longer since we had a good horror novel. This doesn't fully qualify as a horror novel, but if you try to fit this novel in any one box, the box will magically grow larger and kill you.

The book is framed as a lost manuscript discovered by Johnny Truant, a tattoo artist who decides to submit it for posthumous publication. It's sort of like the Blair Witch Project of literature. Truant adds many footnotes to the text, and editorializes as well. To further complicate things, the manuscript is about a documentary that doesn't exist, The Navidson Record, which chronicles the Navidson family as they discover their house is expanding. That was a very rough overview, as Danielewski delights in adding layer after layer.

I've seen the simplified version of this concept many times in horror movies, where a building is entered that somebody can't get out of, or someone is trapped in a hallway that never ends. It's like being in a nightmare, and it is a very effective method of instilling dread and fear in the reader. This is more of a satire on academic writing than anything else, but I loved the moments of more traditional storytelling regarding the hellhouse. 

A unique, labyrinth of a novel that would make Jorge Luis Borges proud.

RATING: ****-

Interesting Facts:

Written in longhand then revised with a word processor.

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