Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

92 reviews

magicant's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Cursing, Gun violence, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Alcohol

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Confinement, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Vomit, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Sexual harassment

lindsaylhunter's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The sheer amount of work, energy and intellect that went into the crafting of this book is nothing short of extraordinary. This is one of the most challenging books I've ever read and, I'll admit, the only reason I sat down to read it in the first place was because of its insane formatting. Tense, creepy and downright unsettling, this is one of the only books I've ever read that left me with an uneasiness that has bled into my dreams.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Gun violence

Minor: Infidelity and Rape

bearystarry's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I was expecting this to be the scariest book I'd ever read, and maybe actually fear doesn't translate well for me through books, but this was much more... sad to me than anything else. I only had creepy feelings a couple of times, but really the main takeaway I had from this book was emotional devastation. (Though that may be due to my personal circumstances currently as well.)

An extremely compelling if difficult read, anyway. And difficult to track your pages read through an app like this lol.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Infidelity, Suicide, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Ableism, Body horror, Cancer, Death, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Forced institutionalization, and Death of parent

joshoonet's review against another edition

challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

• The very core story of the Navidson Record is incredibly interesting and thrilling. I love the descriptions of their explorations and the uncertainty that comes with them.
• Zampanòs huge passages of discussing certain words and picking apart their meanings nearly made me stop reading, out of pure disconnection with the content. Even if it related to the core story. My god.
• Can only recommend checking out the appendixes as one goes along, they provide a more thorough understanding of the text. Although the same can't be said about the hints to other chapters. That got too confusing for me.
• LOVED the code that could be found and potentially deciphered here and there. I'm sure i missed some too.
• Overall: high concentration needed to read this, but worth it in the end. I'll keep thinking about it for a while, but won't be picking it up again anytime soon.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Cancer, Infidelity, Vomit, Car accident, Death of parent, and Abandonment

Long, purely informative passages about the background and meaning of specific terms or topics can be skipped or skimmed. On the topic of sexual content and misogyny:

truant's stories are laden with viewing women only as sexual objects; these parts can be skipped without losing too much of the plot.

reggiethebird's review against another edition

challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, and Alcohol

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Rape and Vomit

blobvis's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Alright people be like "I can't describe this book" and I think they're not trying hard enough lol

Anyways, this books follows the story of Johnny who found the so called Navidson records, an essay about a film that probably has never existed and is written by the man who lived in the apartment before him. As the reader you are experiencing the story of Navidson at the same time as Johnny is. Which it think it pretty neat. What makes this book fun however is not the endless, quite boring footnotes with Johnny's drugs and sex life, or the long explanation about why there is a parallel between Navidson and his brother and a part of the Bible. What makes it interesting is how the writer uses lettering, spacing and the layout of the pages to emphasise the scenes. Something that made me laugh in wonder because I did not expect to have tot turn the book upside down to read it further.
Sometimes the pages only contain a few words making you turn the pages quickly and feeling the tension of the scene and the feelings of the characters in twofold.
As well as I think that it's interesting that the deeper Navidson goes into the house the more unstable Johnny becomes. I really like how there are so much parallels between the essay and Johnny's life, and between the characters in the essay itself (although the essay seems to be mainly written to find those parallels). I do love the editors' footnotes, they made me laugh. And in the end I didn't mind Johnny's footnotes that much because they became less frequent and more focused aka he stopped doing drugs and stopped talking about how much he fucked. And I did like reading his last notes on the book.

In any case I basically read a rather interesting essay instead of a book so 4 stars because it's just really creative and I love creativity 

And as I heard there are some secrets in it too as well as an dedicated community to find it. Not my cup of tea but maybe for others the reason to read it. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Child abuse, and Sexual content

Minor: Addiction, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

mathewsc23's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Drug use, Genocide, Mental illness, and Death of parent

booksaregodly's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical trauma, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Alcoholism, Gun violence, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Grief, and Alcohol

Minor: Death of parent

carrionkid's review against another edition

5.0

Unlike nothing I've ever read before, though I definitely think I need a reread or two to fully glean all the layers to it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Drug abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

stefo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

 
̶T̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶

I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to write a review on such a detailed and maximalist work of literature but here I go. I won't go into spoiler territory and will mostly just express my fascination with this book and try and get YOU to read it too :)

For what it is, House of Leaves is a difficult book for a number of reasons, the almost ironic pseudo-academic passages, our incredibly unreliable narrator Johnny Truant and his at times incoherent ramblings, the dismembered structure of the story as a whole and the incredible experimentation with page layout, typography and general weirdness of it all. But, I strongly believe that once you ease yourself into the first couple of chapters, with enough free time most of the book will pass like a breeze, or as some people may call it "a page turner". Also, there are lots of dense pages where you have to slow down a bit but some of the chapters are totally rapid-fire.

Another interesting thing about this behemoth is that I can't really restrain it to being a single genre, the top genre here on Goodreads is "Horror" but in my opinion this is much, much more than just that and to be honest I wont even try to explain it with genres, maybe the closest would be "Experimental Meta-Horror" if such genre exists.

There are so many twist and turns in the story and so many different interpretations that the possibilities of the "mystery" seem almost endless. However, I think that the best part of the book IS the journey of reading it, sure the ending is great and manages to encapsulate the chaos pretty well but I think the act of reading this thing in general is the excitement of it all, probably the most fun I've had in literature in, well, ever.

The act of reading may be fun here, but this is In my honest opinion not a funny book, it cracks some good jokes from time to time and there is some more humorous characters but again, I can't really confine it to mere descriptors since it offers a lot. Some people have stated that they found it straight up scary, some cried, some found it mysterious and some, funny and I can confidently say the book can be all that to different readers. I personally found the story incredibly sad, not in a depressing way to be honest but in a strong emotional way, accompanied by Nine Inch Nail's "Ghosts" album series this book made me FEEL a lot. Still have that gaping feeling in my chest as I'm writing this and to be honest books that manage to make me FEEL are the best, I'm also sure this book is capable of making you feel something too.

If any of this sounds like an interesting time by all means give this book a chance! Few will regret it :) Be sure to stay out of spoiler territory and don't Google much, some things are better when you don't know a lot about them. (Also, this is in no way a book to be read in e-book format, I highly suggest you buy the "Remastered Full-Color Edition" since it gives the best experience, or if you know me personally hit me up and I'll happily lend it to you!) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, Violence, Grief, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Physical abuse, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Blood, and Death of parent

Minor: Child death, Self harm, Sexual assault, and Suicidal thoughts