A review by jcnfia
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

2.0

DNF. 246 pages in and I just couldn’t do it anymore. This book and it’s unreliable narrator is insufferable. I had such high expectations for this after seeing so much hype from it’s cult following, but every time I tried to read this I felt like throwing it into a wall or tearing it in half with my bare hands. Can you tell I hate this book? Two stars because of the somewhat intriguing premise, but it’s so miserable to read. It’s incredibly misogynistic, needlessly dense, slow, and pretentious. It’s more like a puzzle for men who think that not going to therapy and drugs is a personality trait. The narrator actually makes a lot more sense if you view him through a lens of insanity that’s convinced him an endless onslaught of women would actually sleep with some musky hermit that compares boobs to “bouncing Pac-men”.