A review by sara_berlin
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“I have no idea whether it’s on purpose or not. Sometimes I’m certain it is. Other times I’m sure it’s just one big fucking train wreck.” (Page 149)

I could tell this book would be a trip just from the introduction (little did I know to what extent). It unnerved me to my core, was strange and exhilarating but also at times hilariously absurd. I liked the random tangents of linguistics, physics, chemistry and psychology that it went on (although the one about echoes was just boring almost-nonsense, even though I understood the purpose it was still my least favorite) but other people might find that annoying so depends on your taste. I’ll be honest, I didn’t read entirety of the insanely long lists of names or random other things like architectural features, just enough to get the gist of what it was.

Some parts of this were borderline erotica (blame Truant trying to bury his fear using sex, drugs and alcohol), so definitely not appropriate for younger readers.

It did get a bit slower about halfway through when the actual plot was mostly over with and we just got some final reveals, more background on the characters, the aftermath of the events and reactions to the film, but I still appreciated and enjoyed it. I really like how the relationships between all the characters, especially Karen and Navy, are examined and how there’s different theories and views on them. It also leaves some stuff up for interpretation by us. Oh, and there's three appendices so that was interesting. My favorite part of those were the letters.

One of my many favorite aspects of the book was how trauma was examined. At first I was like “aren’t they overreacting a little to this whole house thing?” But when I thought about it, I would probably react the same way. I’m just so used to characters in Young Adult books being seemingly immune to trauma, seeing people die and killing people without any huge impacts on their mental health (with the exception of Six of Crows, which did it pretty well, my compliments to Leigh Bardugo). Pretty much every character got at least a bit of an explanation of the impacts the house had on them and why it was different for different people. I really appreciate that.

I tabbed the hell out of this book, probably like more than thirty tabs. I enjoyed it to the very last page (excluding the index, obviously). Despite many things not being explained the way they normally are in books, I didn't feel annoyed or like it was unfinished. This is definitely a book I’ll be rereading soon. Definitely isn’t a book that's easy to read and relaxing, it takes real effort to focus and understand.  I feel like the resilience I’ve gained from reading this in only a little under three weeks makes me capable of reading anything, lol. Although it did hook me so that definitely made it easier. Also it’s crazy to think how my perception has changed since reading the first page, even since being halfway through.

             -1st reread/2nd read-

I don’t reread books very often, but this was one where the second I finished it I was like I want to forget it all and do it over again, and while I will say that I forgot a lot more than I thought I did and I definitely gained some new observations and things that stood out to me on this reread, I did remember a fair bit. It took me a lot longer this time around, I think partly because of life circumstances and partly because there wasn’t that much suspense since, even if I didn’t remember the details, I still kinda knew what to expect. Overall, I did enjoy rereading it and will probably do it again at some point in the future. 

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