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A review by canopicfemme
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
2.25
this was a massive disappointment. one of those books where style takes precedent over the quality of the content. don’t get me wrong, it was a unique reading experience and I enjoyed reading a book that was formatted in a way that i’ve never seen before. however the actual story left much to be desired. i would’ve dnfed this book 20% in if the format wasn’t so interesting. despite being a horror book that’s been praised for being terrifying, i never felt anything other than a mild shiver bc anything that had the potential to be unnerving was overshadowed by the amount of unnecessary content.
the part’s about the navidson record we’re interesting at times, tho usually it was dull. Johnny’s segments were even worse. at best they were rambles that while connected to the navidson record stuff, were too long and branched off into random stories from his past. at worst the johnny segments were long, barely coherent ramblings that were not connected to anything.
this book does not need to be this long, there is so much unnecessary shit that should’ve been cut out. most of johnny’s ramblings, whatever the hell those pelican poems were, the random quotes at the end of the book (+ more) were unnecessary. the r slur is thrown in for some reason as well as ableist and racist remarks.
THE FUCKING MISOGYNY IN THIS BOOK. pretty much all the women are sexy, naive but intelligent, have basically the same personality, and johnny want’s to sleep with pretty much all of them and so the reader is subjected to multiple paragraphs of johnny just fantasising of sleeping with all these women and it’s like ????? what the fuck??? not a single well rounded woman in this book, ever single one of the women revolve entirely around their relationship to a man.
there’s also the use of rape as just a tragic backstory mentioned in a one off line for about 1/4 of the women in this book, not to mention the part where johnny fantasies about raping a woman.
there’s also the descriptions of unnecessarily gruesome animal death.
how this book has such a cult following is beyond me.
the part’s about the navidson record we’re interesting at times, tho usually it was dull. Johnny’s segments were even worse. at best they were rambles that while connected to the navidson record stuff, were too long and branched off into random stories from his past. at worst the johnny segments were long, barely coherent ramblings that were not connected to anything.
this book does not need to be this long, there is so much unnecessary shit that should’ve been cut out. most of johnny’s ramblings, whatever the hell those pelican poems were, the random quotes at the end of the book (+ more) were unnecessary. the r slur is thrown in for some reason as well as ableist and racist remarks.
THE FUCKING MISOGYNY IN THIS BOOK. pretty much all the women are sexy, naive but intelligent, have basically the same personality, and johnny want’s to sleep with pretty much all of them and so the reader is subjected to multiple paragraphs of johnny just fantasising of sleeping with all these women and it’s like ????? what the fuck??? not a single well rounded woman in this book, ever single one of the women revolve entirely around their relationship to a man.
there’s also the use of rape as just a tragic backstory mentioned in a one off line for about 1/4 of the women in this book, not to mention the part where johnny fantasies about raping a woman.
there’s also the descriptions of unnecessarily gruesome animal death.
how this book has such a cult following is beyond me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Rape, Violence, Death, Mental illness, and Sexual content
Moderate: Child abuse and Drug abuse
Minor: Ableism, Racism, and Cancer