Weird Wednesday: House of Leaves

      Searching for a literary challenge? Look no further! Take a dark, twisty journey of mystery, intrigue, and horror with today's Weird Wednesday book, House of Leaves. 

     House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, is not so much a book as it is a complicated puzzle. The novel is presented  as if the reader was handed a folder of cryptic notes and scribbles and asked to decipher it. This bundle of paper describes the musings of a man who may or may not be a charasmatic liar, spinning a tale of a young family who moves into a strange house. What's so strange about this house and why does this guy seem fascinated by it? According to the man's story, the dimensions of the house are physically different on the inside than what they are on the inside. What appears to be a modest home ends up looking like the inner-workings of a palace, somehow distorting time-space and physics. The house morphs and nothing can be explained. Unseen monsters are heard in closets and hallways as the family is forced to deal with the madness. The main character learns all about this when he discovers a manuscript titled  The Navidson Record, which was written by a blind man named Zampanò who recently passed away. Zampanò writes about a documentary film (which may not exist) that recalls the events surrounding a photojournalist who finds a house that has supernatural qualities.

     The reader is not simply a person reading this book. The reader is an active participant to the story. There are messages to be decoded, secrets to be uncovered before moving onto another part of the story, and photographs to be examined. The book itself is more like a 'found footage' document, much like films such as Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity, and The Blair Witch Project. It is as if the reader has stumbled across an old file that someone gathered together and left somewhere. It is actually somewhat difficult to explain what exactly this book is about without actually experiencing it. The best way I can sum it up is this: Inception and The Blair Witch Project had a lovechild and Stephen King was its nanny. 

     This is definitely a challenging read. This isn't a book where the reader can skim through some passages or skip pages. In a couple places, it tells you to skip to later chapters, only to return to the earlier pages. This book has stories within stories, appendixes, footnotes, headers, and random sections of chaotic fonts and formats. Formats that include interviews, letters, bibliographies, photographs of scrap paper and torn notes, and transcripts. One page may be completely filled with script while the next page may be blank. Some pages only have one word written on it, some have paragraphs that are printed upside-down or backwards (the reader may need a mirror handy nearby in order to read certain passages!). Font sizes change sporadically. Occasionally, words are bolded, italicized, or underlined for seemingly no reason (or is there a reason?). This story told by a mad man makes the reader question their own mind and sanity as the book switches between order and chaos.

     I would recommend this book for anyone who is a fan of horror and can appreciate a complex read. 

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski is available on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and retail booksellers. It is not available (and most likely impossible to read) on any e-reader formats nor audio book.