Contains spoilers.

Reading House of Leaves, for me, was a lot like watching the television show Lost.   It was deep, mysterious, and always left you wanting to “find out what happens next.”  And, much like in watching Lost, I got same feeling towards the end: “boy, they don’t have much longer to wrap this up and answer all my questions before the ending.”   But it did end and my questions still, for the most part, remain unanswered.

House of Leaves is about a guy named Johnny Truant who, through his friend, comes into possession of the nearly finished manuscript written by the recently deceased Zampano, a character who only lives within the story through his writing.  The manuscript, written by the elderly Zampano, is an academic criticism of a documentary that does not exist (neither in the real world nor in the world of the characters) called The Navidson Record. The book then flips between the narrative of Johnny, told through footnotes and thoughts he has written down as he reads Zampano’s work, and the analysis of The Navidson Record.

The Navidson Record is a documentary (that doesn’t exist) made by a photojournalist by the name of Will Navidson (who, likewise, does not exist).  Its the footage taken from various cameras set up around his house as well as the exploration of a mysterious black hallway that has suddenly appeared leading from a doorway in their living room.  Will, along with the help of his brother Tom, his friend Billy Reston, and a hired explorer named Holloway, attempts to explore the hall.  The characters note, upon entering the hallway, that the walls, floor, and ceiling are completely black with no decorative features or lighting.  The hallway leads to other hallways and even rooms (black, no windows, no decorative characteristics) in a massive labyrinth that does not, and could not, exist within the physical confines of Navidson’s house.  The space is freezing cold and completely silent, all save for the menacing growl they hear echoing in the space occasionally.

Notably, the exploration of said hallway culminates into a pivotal moment when the characters happen upon a room of great girth and, in the center, is an enormous spiral staircase leading down into the dark oblivion (the book describes the staircase as being at least 750 feet across).  It is explored, although I won’t go into detail, and drives certain characters to various levels of insanity.

Entwined with the tale of The Navidson Record is Johnny’s narration, who is slowly going insane the more obsessed he becomes with the manuscript. It breaks into the Navidson subplot through footnotes that may continue along the bottom half of the pages for quite some time, with the Navidson analysis running on the top half of the page.  Occasionally, this presents a problem for the reader as to know when to break from one story to catch up on the next, sometimes requiring small backtracks.  This, along with the page layout, is very symbolic of the hallway within The Navidson Record.  Much like the dark hallways forming a labyrinth of dead ends and backtracks, the book forces the reader to oftentimes choose which “path” (ie. story) to follow and then backtrack for the other.

In addition to this mechanic, the page layout in House of Leaves is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.  The layout of text is symbolic, a literal representation of the story being told, a labyrinth of words designed to make the reader feel as though they were in a maze trying to find their way out.  Some pages will have text scrunched into every white space of the page, oftentimes running backwards or upside down.  Footnotes may be on their sides and halfway up the page, cutting into the text depicting the story.  Occasionally there is a stretch of 20- 30 pages where there will only be a word or two on each page, both symbolizing the expanse of some of the spaces found within the hallway and also causing the reader to become frantic, turning the pages faster and faster in an anxious attempt to find out what happens next.  In some of the seemingly unimportant footnotes and random lists you can add up the first letters of each word to find a hidden code.  Never have I read a story where the very font and textual layout are key to both experiencing and interpreting the book.

By the end of the book I had many many questions, most of which went unanswered.  In reality a lot of my questions were designed to have no true answers, rather the answers are different depending on how you chose to view the book and story therein.  In the end Johnny publishes Zampano’s manuscript and titles it House of Leaves, the very same book you have read.  And, much like the obsessed Johnny, you can find a whole cult following on the internet of people, ten years after release, still deciphering the story (see link below).  But the true beauty in House of Leaves is that Navidson comes to the conclusion that the hallways and rooms change and shift depending on who (and the mental status of that person) is in them… and that is very much like the book itself: the meaning of the story and all of it’s symbology will vastly differ person to person.  Much like Ahab’s whale (which is a comparison readily drawn within the book) it can represent a number of things…

…and sometimes it’s just a whale.

WELL worth reading!

( click here for the forum board for House of Leaves Discussion)