Review: House of Leaves

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

House of Leaves, especially as a debut novel from Mark Z. Danielewski, is quite an achievement.

I was told that the unconventional format and structure (unusual page layout, numerous footnotes including footnotes on footnotes, and style) make this a daunting challenge an example of the imposing "ergodic" literature genre where "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text" (Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature).

I found it more an entertaining haunted house story and complexity was really well managed in presentation: there's an index, the basic three narrators have dedicated typeface and layout of the copious footnotes, including references to fictional books, films or articles, is well-planned and leads to little unnecessary page turning.

Of the multiple narrators, who interact with each other in layers of commentary, are really not so bad: the documentary and its subjects being analyzed, the recently deceased Zampanò (first author), first-person narrator Johnny Truant delivering and interrupting Zampanò, and, finally, the editor-publishers. Like I said, all that is easy to separate and even sensible, yet I feel Truant the most obnoxious voice and the one that adds the least and takes away the most from the narrative. The musings of the rootless, irresponsible Los Angeles tattoo parlor employee could have been left on the editors' floor resulting in a shorter book no less imaginative and interesting, IMHO.

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