A review by ebbie_casuallereading
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
3.0
Between 2.5 and 3.
I get it, kinda, why people like it, but also ugh.
The house thing is really cool and what is good about this book. The rest was tedious and long and bleh.
It's more of a flex from the author than entertaining or mind blowing for the reader. I also think there's a great missed opportunity with the colony chosen as the origin story, but that spoiler-ish so I won't say more on the matter.
Johnny Truant is not only unlikable, but reading through is parts was really excruciating at times, and there's some (TW) mention of rape, murder of animals, and mention of abuse that were not all that well motivated.
I appreciated the winks and more cinema/literature stuff + the French parts (even though the translation is not always the best), because these things were all part of my academic life, but even then, it became kind of a thing where after a few times, you got it, and it doesn't have the same feeling to it afterwards. You're just start to roll your eyes. It's supposed to be Zampano's stuff, but as the voices of him and Truant start to blend a little more, as the whole book is constructed as a "tour de force" by the author, one cannot fail to associate the annoying stuff to the editorial choice of the one pulling the strings of the characters.
The whole mise en abyme is fun for a while, but after the "surprise" of it, the recognition of the game, it becomes just there, and not enough to withstand interest.
I've finished the book solely because I wanted to know the ending of the movie. Everything else, I didn't care for. I was counting the pages until I arrived at the ones with less text to read. And it's all fun and everything, the layout thing, but even at the time of publishing, it was nothing new, so I had the "I see what you're doing" half smirk, but nothing more.
I guess, yet again, my expectations where too high, or the length of the book somewhat killed my enjoyment of it. There were big parts of the book, mostly Truant's parts, where I was made very aware I was reading a book written by a white male author, which made the mother's letters reveal fall very flat as well. I don't know if it's because it didn't aged well or something, but yeah, tedious, annoying and boring. It brings the greatness of the house story down.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm done. Highly unlikely I'll give the author another chance.
I get it, kinda, why people like it, but also ugh.
The house thing is really cool and what is good about this book. The rest was tedious and long and bleh.
It's more of a flex from the author than entertaining or mind blowing for the reader. I also think there's a great missed opportunity with the colony chosen as the origin story, but that spoiler-ish so I won't say more on the matter.
Johnny Truant is not only unlikable, but reading through is parts was really excruciating at times, and there's some (TW) mention of rape, murder of animals, and mention of abuse that were not all that well motivated.
I appreciated the winks and more cinema/literature stuff + the French parts (even though the translation is not always the best), because these things were all part of my academic life, but even then, it became kind of a thing where after a few times, you got it, and it doesn't have the same feeling to it afterwards. You're just start to roll your eyes. It's supposed to be Zampano's stuff, but as the voices of him and Truant start to blend a little more, as the whole book is constructed as a "tour de force" by the author, one cannot fail to associate the annoying stuff to the editorial choice of the one pulling the strings of the characters.
The whole mise en abyme is fun for a while, but after the "surprise" of it, the recognition of the game, it becomes just there, and not enough to withstand interest.
I've finished the book solely because I wanted to know the ending of the movie. Everything else, I didn't care for. I was counting the pages until I arrived at the ones with less text to read. And it's all fun and everything, the layout thing, but even at the time of publishing, it was nothing new, so I had the "I see what you're doing" half smirk, but nothing more.
I guess, yet again, my expectations where too high, or the length of the book somewhat killed my enjoyment of it. There were big parts of the book, mostly Truant's parts, where I was made very aware I was reading a book written by a white male author, which made the mother's letters reveal fall very flat as well. I don't know if it's because it didn't aged well or something, but yeah, tedious, annoying and boring. It brings the greatness of the house story down.
Anyway, I'm glad I'm done. Highly unlikely I'll give the author another chance.