House of Leaves

709 pages

English language

Published May 4, 2000 by Pantheon Books.

ISBN:
978-0-375-70376-8
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5 stars (1 review)

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 …

1 edition

A Fantastic Fever Dream

5 stars

Whenever anyone asks me for a recommendation on a book, I give them House of Leaves. As a fan of experimental novels, nervous tension, lingering dread, beautiful and sometimes baffling prose, and reading as a physical experience, this book ticks all my boxes.

I seldom read a book more than once, but I’ve read House of Leaves several times. It’s constructed and printed such that it’s like reading a different book every time. Not a different story, but a different telling of the same story. Reading it the second time was a bit like overhearing the same conversation from the other side of the room, if that makes any sense.

It’s a great book. It’s inventive, challenging, and beautifully terrifying. In movies, they talk about elevated horror. This is an elevated haunted house book in all the right ways.