Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - House of Leaves

Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

27 reviews

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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joshoonet's review

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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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melliedm's review against another edition

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challenging dark slow-paced

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

0.5

Boy oh boy oh boy it’s been a while since I read something I despised so deeply. Each page felt wet with masculine hubris as a dreadfully dull and unoriginal tale was told wrapped up in a coat of artistic desperation.

House of Leaves is a stack of papers containing the academic paper an old shut-in wrote about a possibly non-existent documentary film, compiled by a young man who filched the work in progress from the old man’s apartment after he died. And all of that is put together by another editor. The piece is layered, absolutely, but not in an organic way, and not in a compelling way, just in a patience-testing way.

The academic essay goes from recounting the exact moments of the film to pontificating on echoes to recounting the moments on the film in a format that had me mourning the many trees turned to pulp for the thousands of copies of this book. (Single paragraphs, single words, single sentences at “””evocative””” angles, pages dedicated to telling us that what should be on the page is missing.) the essay is dotted with hundreds of footnotes, which are almost all meaningless, and stretch the read time unnecessarily. The essay is not all bad. On occasion there is something interesting raised, or a tension that begins to build… Each time something intriguing begins to happen in this recounting of the documentary, though, in comes the footnote from our other writer.

His name is Johnny Truant and he does drugs and drinks and has a lot of sex—graphic sex, sex written from the perspective of someone who clearly fetishizes women, to the point of fetishizing their skin colour if they happen to not be white. His constant interruptions to the essay are eyeroll inducing because nothing in his sob story is interesting, nothing in it is gripping, nothing in it makes him a character I feel interested in learning more about. I thought perhaps we were supposed to hate him—but then comes in a letter to the editor from an 18 year old girl who knew him talking about how cool he was. Uhhhh, what? So here I am, reading the women he objectifies in his life as the character objectifying them, but this “from the horse’s mouth” moment tells me that nah, you’re reading it wrong. Christ on a stick. This of course culminates in some horrific, gender-based violence later on, which is followed by some strangers wondering if this mysterious Johnny Truant ever got the love he deserves UWU

Gag.

In short, House of Leaves could have been a perfectly fine story about a strange house and the impact it has the relationship between the couple the documentary follows/is made by, which is the only effective throughline in the book for me. Unfortunately, the author or someone in his circle must have thought that wouldn’t be good enough, so he instead became the thing the first few pages try to satirize: a boring, pretentious attempt at making a mountain out of a molehill.

YMMV.

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ggcd1981's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

Eu remei esse livro, o que não deveria ter me surpreendido. House of leaves é uma obra a qual eu tinha ouvido vários Booktubers falar sobre, a maioria deles dando boas notas. Contudo todos os booktubers que vi deram o aviso de que o livro “não é para todo mundo” e que você precisa pesquisar para compreendê-lo melhor, e, segundo muitos, esse é um texto presunçoso. A proposta inicial é que a obra consiste de uma história dentro de uma história dentro de outra história. Todas essas informações sobre House of Leaves despertaram minha curiosidade, mas após a leitura do mesmo vejo que eu não sou a leitora para ele. Sendo justa com a obra minha leitura começou em desvantagem pois não tenho a cópia física então tive que ler a cópia digital para kindle e adaptação para esse formato teve problemas. Isso tornou a leitura um pouco distante da intencionada pelo autor e representou uma dificuldade a mais em um livro que já tem obstáculos por natureza. House of leaves faz diversas referências a uma ampla gama de fontes nas mais diversas áreas de interesse, Física, Mitologia Grega, Arquitetura, Psicologia, etc. Eu comecei tentando pesquisar as informações, mas se tornou cansativo bem rápido. No momento em que estou em minha vida não quis dedicar tanto tempo e esforço a um único livro que não estava me prendendo tanto. A obra não é ruim e com certeza é bastante original, mas a sensação geral que tive foi de uma boa história diluída em um monte de informações que muitas vezes não adicionam muito (por exemplo uma interminável lista de nomes de fotógrafos). A narrativa que o autor chama de The Navidson Records está no coração de House of Leaves, um suposto documentário de um evento inexplicável ocorrido na casa da família Navidson. A existência desse documentário é questionada no próprio livro, mas a partir dele se inicia a narrativa de Zampanò, e a partir dessas duas se inicia a narrativa de Johnny Truant. A história do documentário é a mais interessante e a mais próxima de ser coerente. As histórias de Zampanò e de Johnny são mais desconexas e cheias de buracos. Mas em geral ler essa obra é como tentar ouvir uma narrativa contada por alguém absurdamente dispersivo. Quando este narrador começa o conto ele logo envereda por uma tangente e nela se aprofunda, quando você não lembra mais do que ocorria no conto original o narrador retorna a este deixando você completamente perdido e cortando qualquer tipo de emoção que você deveria sentir durante a história. Essas muitas interrupções e tangentes que, diversas vezes, não tinham qualquer real relevância para o texto, acontecem durante todo livro diluindo os pontos de interesse e deixando meus sentimentos sobre a obra “Mornos”.

Um ponto que não gostei da história, por se sensível a crueldade contra animais, foi um momento em que um cachorrinho foi morto de forma cruel. Eu realmente gostaria que autores achassem outra forma de mostrar que um personagem é mau. Outro ponto que achei irritante foi que todas as personagens femininas no livro foram sexualizadas mesmo quando não havia necessidade. Desde de Karen Green, esposa de Will Navidson, a todas as mulheres com quem Johnny Truant interagiu. As mulheres nesse livro pareciam existir em função dos personagens masculinos. Fosse como esposa de Navidson, como mãe de Johnny ou um simples encontro sexual ou fantasia do mesmo, as mulheres em House of Leaves giram ao redor dos personagens masculinos e existem para cumprir uma função na história desses. Um elemento que me surpreendeu na obra foi o realismo dos ataques de pânico de Johnny. Eu não esperava e quase foi um gatilho para mim, mas, mesmo assim, apreciei a representação. Em geral minha opinião é que há histórias interessantes no livro, mas elas se encontram diluídas no excesso de informação desnecessária. Informação esta que foi incluída por questões de estilo e não de pertinência a narrativa. Aliás fica claro que o estilo é prioridade em House of Leaves em detrimento do story telling. Se o autor pelo menos tivesse sido mais coeso e objetivo nas divagações o texto prenderia muito mais e não sentiria tão forte que o livro se auto sabota ao desarmar toda tensão, apreensão, medo, enfim qualquer emoção com tangentes longas, incoerentes e tediosas. Isso também contribuiu para a sensação de que os “finais positivos” para as histórias de Navidson e Truant não foram merecidos ou se quer fizeram sentido. A impressão passada é de que Mark Z. Danielewski queria aqueles finais para os personagens e foi isso.

Enfim, eu aprecio que o autor tentou fazer algo diferente e original. Existe mérito nisso, contudo o resultado me deixou com a sensação de que poderia der sido melhor. Assim, dou 3 estrelas, o livro foi acima da média porem me deixou com as frustrações de que o meu “esforço não foi o suficiente” e do que a história “poderia ter sido”.

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woweewhoa's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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funmilayo's review

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When I first started reading this book I was really excited because I never read anything quite like it. The storyline seemed very complex, mysterious and overall intriguing. The main reason as to why I was so excited to read this book however, was that I had read an abundance of reviews that described this book as one of the scariest stories ever. It wasn't. There were a few parts where the author tried to build up tension and did so quite interestingly (by influencing the reading speed through word placement and the format of certain passages). However, in the end all of these attempts fell completely flat and left you wanting more so that the book would eventually live up to its hype...which it really didn't. In regards to the scariness of the story: the only truly scary part of this book was the absolutely disgusting misogyny. Mark Z. Danielewski absolutely cannot write complex female characters (Imagine Haruki Murakami but make it ten times as misogynistic!). The only "personality trait" these women had was trauma and their entire personality seemingly revolved around the male characters (Johnny in particular). There's this really horrible passage that is litteraly just page after page of Johnny detailing the traumatic experiences of every woman he's ever met in extreme detail. Lots of male authors are into using trauma/abuse of women as a plot device (because a womans pain is apparently the only substantial thing about her) but Danielewski doesn't even use the trauma for the plot...it has absoulutely nothing to do with anything which makes it all the more disturbing. There were a few passages that were somewhat interesting but not enough to redeem the overall theme and style of the story. Johnny is a literal incel and it makes me sick to read about his thoughts and actions and the lack of reflection and discussion of the extremely misogynistic content of this book is incredibly alarming. Obviously I wasn't expecting a feminist manifesto from this book but I also wasn't expecting an incel manifesto so... .
In conclusion: the idea for the story and the interesting concept and layout seemed really promising but fell through completely. I cannot and will not reccomend this book to anybody. There's much better (psychological) horror books and stories out there that are scary without being completely dehumanizing.

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veganecurrywurst's review

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0 ⭐
This book just wasn't for me (to quote the beginning)
I wanted to be scared and I was looking forward to all the riddles. But the more I read the less I cared. I just wanted it to be over. It wasn't even the academic style of writing or Johnny (although I sometimes felt that Johnny was only written for a shock factor and to be "edgy", which made me lose interest a bit)
The author is undoubtedly very talented and a lot of work went into this. The weird thing is, that I actually enjoyed some of the discussions about the book on Reddit. Maybe I'll pick this book back up in a year or so.

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