There is nothing more terrifying than learning what we truly know about the world is not correct. New in The Matrix, Mickey Rourk in Angel Heart, and Neo in The Devil's Advocate all learn that we are hunted by a larger predator than we know, and those who never see it don't know how lucky they have been. The truly horrifying isn't that which we know and understand, it is that which we don't and yet DOES know us.

I ran into House of Leaves at Barnes and Noble and was immediately attracted to it's presentation. It is a thick, bookshelf edition paperback with unique layout and presentation. Flipping through it, I found pages with only a few words on them, often formatted into shapes like some e e cummings piece. The back had appendices with pictures, scribbles, and other background information. The pages are heavily footnoted and some of the printing is in colored ink. I love a good scary book, and it's been a long time since I had seen one of this quality. This seemed too good to pass up.

The premise is a bit convoluted, so stick with me. The book opens with a narrative from our frantic 20-something host. It appears that something has terrified him to the degree that he stays locked in his room and barely has contact with the outside... and yet something inside is deadly as well. Then we discover what has scared him so badly. When his bestfriend's neighbor died of mysterious causes, they snuck into the place and liberated a manuscript that the old man had apparently been working on for many years. The manuscript covers a topic unfamilar to our narrator, a forgotten documentary called The Navidson Record. This manuscript contains commentary, scene by scene, while looking into the people being filmed for more than just their surface reactions. So House of Leaves is a story about a manuscript about a movie.

Centerpiece to it all is The Navidson Record. Will Navidson, a famous photographer, decides to move his family into a new home and capture, on film, how it affects the family members. He installs motion sensing cameras all over the house and hopes to find the subtleties of the experience in the recordings. But upon returning from a vacation, they discover a new doorway connecting the children's room and their room, and the experiment gets a severe change in subject matter. Nothing was recorded on any of the cameras.

The new doorway opens to a four foot hallway and another door. Will's wife, Karen, is spooked by the addition, and Navidson can't help but look into the mystery. He finds old blueprints of the house, and discovers that while the 4 foot gap between the two rooms is consistant with the records, there seems to be some mismeasured rooms within his house. Navidson carefully measures the inside, compares it to the outside, and learns that his house is exactly one quarter of an inch longer on the inside than on the outside. He checks it again and again. He brings in his brother to help. Then they find out their measurements were incorrect, but they find out the inside is actually larger than they thought.

All the time this is being related, we get to read commentary from the old writer and subtext from our narrator who is slowly losing his mind. Some strange and horrible understanding is growing inside the characters on each level of our tale, and what they see is going to change their lives forever. The reader learns that there is something dark and evil here. There is a black emptiness at the center of this house and at the center of our narrator, and it is slowly opening up for us to see.

Ok, so I hate previews and spoilers and post-analysis before I see or read something I want to experience. I'm about to go into spoiler-mode, so here's my quick sell for those who haven't read this yet: This book is wonderfully engrossing, and the format will challenge even experienced readers. The situations are seriously spooky, the characters are carefully crafted, and the environments are eerily evil. Go get this book, and read it. Now quit reading this review and get to reading House of Leaves.

Now that they are gone, I want to talk to you people who have already experienced this read. I think I know what lies at the center of this novel. I think I understand the truly terrifying vision that Danielewski was trying to present in his multi-layer tale. The rooms and doors that open within the Navidson house are actually physical representations of life. But it is important to note that this life is not happy, bright, shining life... it is life of decay, life of endlessness, and life of death. This is not predictable life, nor is it eventful life. It is life eternal... or perhaps death eternal... A physical example of the futility of existance in infinite scope.

Points of note: The characters are faced with impending death at all turns within the halls of the Navidson house. The hallways possess a characteristic slow decay that eat at objects and chills to the bone. Characters with a zeal for life are either repellant to enter the hallways or refuse to understand the infinte and featureless rooms. No meaning is to be found by searching. No answer is ever gleaned from the halls.

What is the lurker within the rooms in the house? Death. The beast's growl represents reminders of mortality. So while Holloway, who seems to feel he can beat any foe and never fall before death, cannot escape the claws of the beast within Navidson's home, we also get to see Navidson accept his eventual death and quest into the halls for life's meaning. At the end of his journey he has found nothing, and his love for his wife proves to be the only true thing that keeps him alive during his trek. In this, we learn that searching for meaning on the walls of life is pointless. Life has no point when viewed with an infinite scope. The only meaning we can find is with one another. Will's love for his brother and love for his wife are the things that bring him through these hazards.

There is more to my theory, but I'll leave those extrapolations up to you. Think about how each character handles their own life and watches it mockingly reflected back at them through the halls of the Navidson house. Think about how these reflections bring about a sense of mortaility in our characters and how the narrator's view on life is irrepairably altered by understanding the infinite view that the manuscript presents. And then think about how much fun this book has been and how you should lend it to your friends before Halloween!