I'm living in a House of Leaves

Right guys, it's about time I put my 'skills' acquired from studying English Literature in college to use tonight, following up on a promise (for once), and write a post about House of Leaves.
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So House of Leaves is a - Horror(?), Thriller(?), Romance(!?), Maze(...) - novel, spawned by the genius mind of Mark Z. Danielewski. It concerns a man named Johnny Truant, who findsanextensiveessaywrittenbyablindmancalledZampanoaboutafilmcalledTheNavidsonRecordwhichdidn'tactually happen.

You only need to take a look at the fanbase's discussions of the novel to understand the reaction this book can ignite (not in a bad way). Whilst a prose novel (for the most part (we'll get to that later)), I found that I could read much of it as something more like poetry.

There's a bloody lot of interpretations you can take on even the smallest of passages. One page is dedicated to containing only the statement "Muss es sein?" (roughly German for "Must it be?"). Of course you can take it at face value, but behaving this way gets you only so far in the novel. If you want to read it, I'd strongly advise that as your eyes explore the pages, you take the time to ponder over the implications, the hints Danielewski gives (or chooses not to give).

Take the quote I just gave, for instance. "Must it be?" sounds a lamentative statement, you could consider whether it is an existential question, the author of the phrase (be it Johnny, Zampano, or Danielewski) asking why such suffering should exist in their lives - trust me, the characters have issues.

But remember that "es" is Dutch for "ash". Of course, the connotations of destruction could easily be foreshadowing for the dark events to come - "Tum vero omni mihi visum considere in ignis Ilium" - but readers will know at once that the main location of The Navidson Record is a house on Ash Tree Lane.

The book veers and swerves at times, both structurally and in terms of plot. For instance, at some points in the novel the pace will slow to one or two phrases per line. At other times it will accelerate into whimsical tangents in a stream of consciousness. There is a collection of poems embedded in the book, as well as letters sent from the protagonist's schizophrenic mother.

It's hard to dismiss things as coincidence in this book. Though filled at times with typos and seeming anachronisms, when you start to look closely, you realise you were in Plato's cave all along. Nothing is accidental in here; nothing is without meaning, except what is limited by your interpretations. Tread lightly in the House of Leaves, readers, it's easy to miss the details hidden in plain sight.

Or were the readers, perhaps, in the shadow all along?