|
|
|
Why not turn off the television and curl up with a terrifying tome? In service, we hereby present...
THE CONOISSEUR'S GUIDE TO
50 ALTERNATIVE HORROR BOOKS
Reviews by Dave Alexander, John W. Bown, Gemma Files, Richard Gavin, The Gore-met, James Grainger, Sandra Kasturi, Monica S. Kuebler, Brett Alexander Savory and Jovanka Vuckovic.
There's no denying that literary fiction is the root of modern horror as we know it. Some of the most compelling films, games, musical works, etc., are inspired by novels and short stories – some popular and others so obscure and out-ofprint it's near impossible to track down even the most dog-eared copy. Of course, they don't all get adapted, so you'd have to be a dedicated reader to appreciate the diverse terrors that the written word has to offer. Just as there is a collector culture for imported, rare and special edition DVDs, there's one for books: small press editions,
centuries-old leather-bound tomes, first edition hardcovers, you name it. This time last year Rue Morgue brought you a list of 100 alternative horror films – titles you may have overlooked but that every horror film connoisseur should seek out. Now we do the same for genre literature. Like that list, we've worked hard to avoid the mainstream titles to bring you what we feel is a diverse sampling of the best in alternative horror fiction.
You won't find Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King or any of the other usual icons here, but you will discover a mixture of writers old and new, some strictly horror, others making a singular trek into the genre's rocky terrain, and even a few somewhat recognizable genre scribes with strong titles that have been overshadowed by their more popular works. Likewise, some of the books push boundaries, while others have inspired generations of writers. Some may not qualify as literary masterpieces but are notable for taking a highly original approach to a time-worn tale, and others, quite frankly, are simply must-reads, with no more justification than: dare to see for yourself. Narrowing it down to 50 entries has been no small feat. Entries could be a novel, novella or a collection of stories by a single author. Not everyone will agree with all our choices and
some will feel that we omitted some much more deserving titles. That said, allow us to present to you a primer and launching point for over two centuries worth of overlooked, perfectbound gems – along with some relevant book jacket quotes – as chosen by our dedicated team of obsessed readers.
The Monk (1795)
Matthew Lewis
Written in a white heat when Lewis was only nineteen, The Monk is a steam-driven merry-go-round of offhand blasphemy, moral hypocrisy, prurient sexual deviance and sheer Gothic excess. Complex to the point of goofiness, The Monk juxtaposes grisly grue with, as Stephen King notes in Danse Macabre, what often seems like more repetitions of the word “bosom” than any book ever published.
The Tales of Hoffmann (1821)
E.T.A. Hoffmann
Best known for his story The Nutcracker And The Mouse King (the basis for The Nutcracker ballet), German author E.T.A Hoffmann was also a brilliant pioneer of dark fiction. In this collection of his best stories, Hoffmann takes classic motifs from German folk tales and Romantic novels and twists them into surreal tales of obsession, perverse desire and outright horror.
Le Chants de Maldoror (1868)
Comte de Lautreamont
“It is not right that everyone should read the pages which follow; only a few will be able to savour this bitter fruit.” So begins this unflinching and totally bizarre novel of hallucinatory horror, unveiling the worldview of its genuinely depraved narrator. Maldoror is one of the rare examples of a novel that manages to mutate virtually every aspect of setting, character and plot into nightmarish distortions. As the book wages war with human
logic and strives for a total derangement of the senses, Lautreamont mercilessly depicts a parade of pederasts, freaks, murderers and monsters. That both author and narrator seem to be gleefully wallowing in so much terror, misanthropy and woe makes Maldoror too caustic for most readers. Deemed “lost” for many years, the text was eventually resurrected by the painters of the original Surrealist movement and has gone on to inspire everyone from acclaimed genre artists such as Harry O. Morris to industrial rockers Skinny Puppy.
The Great God Pan (1894)
Arthur Machen
There's really no adequate way to describe the overwhelming strangeness of this novella. Arthur Machen's Great God Pan (RM#50), which tells the tale of a medical experiment that unleashes a god-like entity with unquenchable sexual desires into late-Victorian London, is another high point of the English Decadent movement. Not to mention, it had a major influence on Lovecraft, Clive Barker, T.E.D. Klein, Peter Straub and more.
In a Glass Darkly (1872)
Joseph Sheridan LeFanu
Besides Poe, no author is more responsible for rescuing the English-language ghost story from the conventions of Victorian fiction than Irish writer Sheridan LeFanu. The five lengthy stories comprising In a Glass Darkly boldly relocate the source of our deepest fears to the human mind, anticipating the 20th-century revolution in psychological horror fiction. The collection also marks the firstappearance of a fictional paranormal investigator, á la Kolchak and The X-Files.
Lá-Bas (1891)
J.K. Huysmans
A masterpiece of dark fiction from the tastily deviant Decadent literary movement that shocked 19th-century Europe, this unapologetically grim novel revels in blasphemy, Black Masses and the life of notorious child killer Gilles des Rais. Lá-Bas is additionally noteworthy for Huysmans' trademark rich prose.
The King in Yellow (1895)
Robert W. Chambers
A peculiar and mesmerizing blend of romance, horror, and mythology set mostly in the bohemian quarter of Paris, the stories in The King in Yellow are connected by a plot conceit familiar to any horror movie fan: the discovery of a mysterious book that causes the death and/or madness of all who read it. But Chambers wrote this disturbing classic in the early 1890s, putting him about 100 years ahead of his time.
Kwaidan (1904)
Lafcadio Hearn
Elegant, spooky and haunting, this collection of traditional Japanese ghost stories by ex-pat Japanophile Lafcadio Hearn has launched a thousand J-horror films, including the grand daddy of them all, Masaki Kobayashi's classic Kwaidan. If you've ever wondered where all those long-haired ghost girls got their start, look no further.
The Trial (1937)
Franz Kafka
In this ultimate existential horror novel, we see Joseph K. arrested and put on trial for a crime he did not commit. What's worse is the fact that the authorities refuse to tell K. any details of the crime he's charged with. The 300-page nightmare probes our often irrational need for order, as well as the role of the individual in society. We know you read it in university, but take another look at this unfinished work by Kafka; you'll be surprised by its chilling – and often oddly hilarious – prose.
The Plague (1947)
Albert Camus
Borrowing some of his philosophy from the Existentialist movement, Albert Camus spent many of his professional years concerned with human suffering in a hostile, indifferent world. In The Plague, he describes in graphic detail a grim vision of human suffering at the hands of a brutal epidemic (a bubonic plague) that dispassionately sweeps into the fictional Algerian port city of Oran, violently taking out much of its population. In the quarantined city only loneliness, despair and death await a populace who once took their lives for granted. Though the end of the book poses
a positive question about how the individual can change or reflect a change in society as a whole, The Plague remains a harrowing literary masterpiece.
The House on the Borderland (1908)
William Hope Hodgson
No less an authority than Lovecraft himself called The House on the Borderland a “classic of the first order”, and although the novel clocks in at under 200 pages, it does not suffer for lack of ambition. William Hope Hodgson blends elements of horror, science fiction and dark fantasy to tell what at first appears to be a classic haunted house story set on a crumbling family estate in 19th-century Ireland, but quickly evolves into something much more complex. When the lone occupant of the mansion suddenly comes under siege by a race of pig-like humanoids, he decides to fight back and eventually pursues the creatures to their lair, which turns out to be an interdimensional portal not bound to Newtonian laws of time and space. The novel is often noted solely for its impact on Lovecraft, who incorporated its odd blend of dread, speculative science and cosmic conspiracy theories into his own work, but its originality and apocalypic imagery make it a certifiable classic in its own right.
Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1956)
Edogawa Rampo
Though his pen name is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of “Edgar Allan Poe”, Hirai Taro is one of the most original and influential horror writers to emerge from the Far East. The bulk of his work has yet to be translated, but this English-language collection (RM#54) showcases
Rampo's power with erotic-tinged classics like the body transformation-themed TheCaterpillar and the brilliantly twisted The Human Chair.
Nine Horrors and a Dream (1958)
Joseph Payne Brennan
Brennan was a macabre poet who ventured into short fiction for primarily commercial reasons, but his vision and sparing use of language made for some very rich horror tales, such as Canavan's Backyard, in which an elderly accountant discovers that his property has the power to draw visitors into infinite and horrible dimensions. With stories steeped in cosmic atmosphere and gloom, Brennan remains one of the most talented yet obscure authors of 20thcentury weird tales.
A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958)
John Blackburn
In chapter one, an entire Russian village is excised from the face of the earth to stem the spread of some unknown contagion; by chapter three, some unsuspecting British sailors discover exactly how ineffective said excision really was – which takes us up to page 33, exactly. Slim but devastatingly effective, the book combines John Le Carre's Cold War angst with John Wyndham's speculative fiction creep, positing a biological plague (first tested through Nazi concentration camp experiments) that turns ordinary people into walking fungal spore factories. It's a short trip, yet hardly a merry one. Like classic Doctor Who, this often stiff, contrived and coincidence-ridden plot moves like a bat out of hell, shedding dreadfulness every step of the way. While there's no gore, it still leaves most modern apocalyptic scenarios flailing. Blackburn's aim seems to be to take a quiet, logical look at just how easily the world can end, especially when nobody's looking, and he succeeds admirably. Then again, maybe he just wants to scare the pants off of us.
The Owl Service (1967)
Alan Garner
While his books are primarily marketed to children, Garner is one of those authors who readers return to regardless of age. The Owl Service lures us to rural Wales and its peculiar legends. The action is literally and figuratively a building thunderstorm, as a tragic tale from the past repeats itself in one of the most unusual hauntings in fiction. You may never view your dinner plates the same way again.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967)
Joan Lindsay
On Valentine's Day, 1900, a group of private school girls in Victoria, Australia's Mt. Macedon region go for a picnic that ends in tragedy when three pupils and a teacher go missing after climbing a rock. Author Joan Lindsay never reveals the mystery of what happened to the four, which prompted the publication of a book of hypothetical solutions by Yvonne Rosseau in 1980. The “eighteenth chapter”, written but excised from the book by the author, was published after Lindsay's death, which in turn prompted more questions than answers. One of the first “based on a true story” ruses, Picnic at Hanging Rock remains a chilling and essential read.
The Green Man (1969)
Kingsley Amis
Best known for his satirical, urbane comedies of manners, The Green Man is Amis' only foray into horror fiction, which is a shame because he demonstrates an unerring knack for describing the seemingly mundane but increasingly creepy events that lead a widowed innkeeper to conclude that his hotel is haunted by an 18th-century sorcerer with a taste for teenage flesh.
Zothique (1970)
Clark Ashton Smith
A member of the Lovecraft circle, Smith envisioned a very distant future, one where science failed and the world fell into twilight. Zothique is a land of sorcery, pagan gods, monsters and sin, and Smith's prose is some of the finest (and most baroque) ever written.
Blackbriar (1972)
William Sleator
Very few writers can make the British countryside and woods seem even more claustrophobic than the city of London, but William Sleator – known for his young adult books – proves his uncanny ability with Blackbriar, a tale of witch cults, plague houses and hauntings. The novel's tension builds excruciatingly as young Danny is dragged by his guardian Philippa from their tiny apartment to the isolated country house, Blackbriar. Without electricity or even running water, life is rougher than Danny expects, especially having to bring coal up from the increasingly sinister cellar. And what's the meaning of the carved list of names and dates on the ancient wooden door? And why is Danny having strange dreams of arcane rituals centred around the nearby barren hills and their Neolithic grave mounds? Danny tries to figure out the secrets and history of Blackbriar and the surrounding area, while wondering who has his best interests at heart... and who is seeking to harm him. The E.P. Dutton edition of Blackbriar is particularly notable, with Blair Lent's black and white illustrations, which, even when depicting modern scenes, have the feel of deranged woodcuts made by some feverish medieval monk.
All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (1977)
John Farris
Providing pretty good rationale for staying the hell out of the American South, uneven yet undeniably powerful writer Farris uses hallucinogenic shifts in tone and a funk of sensual detail to paint some very disturbing pictures. Among them, a halfsunken riverboat turned swampland voodoo temple, and poisonous snakes that drop from the trees. David Schow calls this “the finest modern sexual horror novel yet written”, which fits. Misogynistic? Probably. Effective? Hell yeah.
The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)
Angela Carter
“The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.” So too must the reader learn to run with Carter in her elegant and lyrical flights of fancy as she turns some of the more grue-filled fairy tales (like Blue eard) inside out. Carter writes so beautifully that even the most dreadful happenings seem like something viewed through cut glass – exquisite, but blinding and dangerous.
San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories (1979)
Tom Reamy
Posthumously published, this is one of the finest short story collections in the English language. Savage, cruel, funny and downright strange, often all in the same piece, Reamy's tales evoke sympathy for even the vilest of protagonists. The title story, about beautifully damaged people living in the darker side of Hollywood and the pacts they make with the devil (literally and figuratively), is particularly heartbreaking.
The Totem (1979)
David Morrell
David Morrell is a master of implication and misdirection, using his trademark sudden shifts in POV to rewire our brains for maximum fear input long before we've even noticed him doing it. At its Arctic best, The Totem demonstrates exactly how thin that skin of civilization which keeps us all from reverting to Cro-Magnon atavism really is, especially when something frothing at the mouth wants to puncture it.
The Nameless (1981)
Ramsey Campbell
Despite the critical acclaim he's garnered within horror circles, Campbell has never won the larger mainstream respect and fanbase he so rightfully deserves. His chilling and almost unbearably suspenseful novel The Nameless – adapted as a Spanish language film in 1999 – follows the desperate quest of a mother who once believed her young daughter was abducted and murdered, but now suspects she's still alive and has been held captive for years by a terrible, malevolent cult.
Voice of Our Shadow (1983)
Jonathan Carroll
Voice of Our Shadow, like most of Jonathan Carroll's novels, contains the elegant juxtaposition of beauty and horror, and one of his favourite tropes: the unreliable narrator. It's also the ultimate example of how Carroll likes to completely fuck with his audience. The reality- shattering reversal that takes place near the book's conclusion leaves readers forced to reconsider everything that has previously occurred in the narrative. Often funny, quirky and charming, this story of a young man's friendship with a sophisticated and fascinating married couple in Vienna, takes
an abrupt left turn midway into a fantastical landscape that strays further and further into one of those inescapable nightmares that wake you up at 2 AM wondering whom you can trust.
The Wasp Factory (1984)
Iain Banks
Controversial from the day of its release, The Wasp Factory is one of those largely misunderstood novels that everyone has heard of but few have actually read. Despite being somewhat less shocking two decades later, the book's violence, sadism and ultimate first-person look into the world of a young psychopath continues to resonate.
Dark Gods (1985)
T.E.D. Klein
In an era of slasher flicks and splatterpunk, Klein (then the fiction editor of Twilight Zone Magazine) showed us that a whisper in the dark can be infinitely more effective than an axe to the face with this collection of four immaculate novellas. The climax of Petey, where a housewarming party is crashed by an unbidden guest, is guaranteed to have you checking over your shoulder.
Song of Kali (1985)
Dan Simmons
Most fans of prolific, multi-genre author Simmons' early horror might cite Carrion Comfort, his psychic vampire epic, as his best work. But this heart-of-darkness tour through Calcutta's underbelly is the real deal – uncompromising on every level. General exoticism and nihilistic creep aside, its last scene alone will pull your stomach out through your mouth.
Why Not You and I? (1987)
Karl Edward Wagner
From the 1970s until his untimely death in 1994, Wagner enjoyed a reputation for being one of horror's finest anthology editors. That's because the man understood the art of the horror story inside and out, and with this collection of his own tales, he showed many lesser writers how it was
done. These stories are slick, emotionally charged, eerie and utterly enthralling. By Bizarre Hands (1989) Joe R. Lansdale Emerging during the '80s horror lit boom, Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep) became a cult sensation largely due to the strength of this early collection. By Bizarre Hands is
pretty much non-stop hard (and strikingly original) horror and suspense spiked with his knack for absurd situations. Best: Bram Stoker Award-winner The Night They Missed The Horror Show, Tight Little Stitches In A Dead Man's Back and the blackly hilarious title tale.
Songs of a Dead Dreamer (1989)
Thomas Ligotti
Considered by many to be the only rightful heir to Lovecraft's legacy, Thomas Ligotti's (RM#48) lavish tales of cosmic horror remain unique in the genre. This debut collection from 1989, which introduced the world to Ligotti's blatantly nihilistic worldview and enigmatic prose, has only gotten better with age.
The Howling Man
(a.k.a Charles Beaumont Selected Stories, 1988)
Charles Beaumont
His teleplays comprised some of the original Twilight Zone's strongest episodes, and he channelled Poe and Lovecraft onto the silver screen for Roger Corman in the '60s, but Charles Beaumont was also one of the most innovative and talented writers of the “California Sorcerers” group. Obsessed with the macabre from a very young age, Beaumont siphoned many of the painful experiences of his much-too-brief life into his art (Miss Gentilbelle, in which a young boy suffers horrific maternal abuse, including having his pets murdered, is just one harrowing example). Beaumont also helped rescue the horror story from the contrivances of Gothic romance by aligning humanity's timeless fears of death and the
unknown with the anxieties of modern urban existence, shunning “dark 'n' stormy” atmospherics in favour of swift plot lines and straightforward prose. In his tales, the powers of darkness work in conjunction with the contemporary world, rather than in spite of it. He seems to be arguing that modern urban sprawls and cutting-edge science were no more effective than holy water and prayer books. The Howling Man is, as of this writing, the most complete collection of his short fiction available and comes with our highest recommendation.
Vampire$ (1990)
John Steakley
With dialogue right out of an '80s TV action series and a John Wayne caricature for a hero, Vampire$ is far from a literary masterpiece, but its pulpy fast-paced plot about a hard-drinkin', nihilistic vampire hunter version of The A-Team takes the tired genre for a gritty and original spin. John Carpenter's laughable film adaptation missed the best parts – such as a vampa cocktail of pig's blood and hard drugs. An antidote to namby-pamby Anne Ricestyle bloodsuckers.
Wilding (1992)
Melanie Tem
With a menstrual blood-soaked intensity that both anticipates and outstrips anything the Ginger Snaps series came up with, Tem peels the Anne Rice glamour off a very different supernatural subculture. In fact, her uniformly hate-crazed all-female cast of werewolves wouldn't stand still long enough to be interviewed, let alone have the vocabulary or the inclination to make it worth anybody's while. Yet there's a horrid poetry in every infectious bite.
Throat Sprockets (1994)
Tim Lucas
Our hero, in search of porn, accidentally catches some sort of heavily spliced softcore instead, after which he finds he can only achieve orgasm by biting a girl's neck. He's been infected with a Cronenbergian viral fetish, apparently spread by visual input via the book's titular film, Throat Sprockets. Better known as Video Watchdog magazine's obsessive creator, Tim Lucas understands intimately how horror fans can feel both drawn to watch the unwatchable and sure that doing so will somehow soil their souls.
The Matrix (1994)
Jonathan Aycliffe
Cold and quiet as a walking corpse, Jonathan Aycliffe's best M.R. James pastiche to date begins when a recently widowed academic studying modern-day witchcraft picks up the wrong book, thus beginning a slow but immersive journey into total moral degeneration. As with most of Aycliffe's novels, we're left with an impression that terrible things lie in wait around every dark corner, and that our own failure to meet them is due to nothing more than mere blind chance.
The Elementals (1995)
Michael McDowell
Best known for writing the Beetlejuice screenplay, it's Micheal McDowell's out-ofprint novels that make him a true hidden horror treasure. When a funeral reunites two Southern families in The Elementals, heroine India McCray discovers that while each family gets a house to itself, the third house is occupied by other utterly malign things. Spirit photography, forgotten history and hoodoo black magic gruesomeness complete this unforgettably bleak tale.
Skin (1993)
Kathe Koja
When a reclusive female sculptor meets a body modification-obsessed dancer (also female), their obsessive relationship sparks a series of ever more elaborate – and dangerous – performance pieces. While her earlier novels (The Cypher, Bad Brains) might best be described as metaphorical explorations of the state of living with mental illness, filtered through a series of vaguely supernatural or simply surreal events, here Koja keeps her horrors strictly down-toearth. She seizes on the 1990s underground industrial culture clichés of extreme bodily modification and robots-who-kill floorshows, then twists them to their absolute outer limits. But Skin's heart of darkness is, above all, a human one. Its characters share a desperate longing to touch, a yearning to merge beyond differentiation, which makes this book the literary equivalent of those self-mutilating valentines the characters keep on sending each other – looks good, but you better not touch, for fear of getting something that could spread. Koja's dense, elliptical stream-of-consciousness style can be equally hard to penetrate, extricate yourself from... or forget.
Black Butterflies (1998)
John Shirley
One of the originators of the cyberpunk movement, John Shirley has also had anequally productive career writing horror. Though not as widely read as they should be, his novels and short fiction create a potent cocktail of social commentary, dripping grue and disturbing, unforgettable imagery. Black Butterflies, a collection of short stories, exemplifies Shirley's unapologetic, maverick style.
Cows (1998)
Matthew Stokoe
Dark, repellent, visceral and just plain nasty. Though not intended for the horror set, few genre readers could make it through Matthew Stokoe's Cows without being thoroughly disturbed and downright disgusted. Be prepared for shit-eating and cow-fucking extraordinaire in this bizarro tale.
Pontypool Changes Everything (1998)
Tony Burgess
Canadian author Tony Burgess crafts a complex tale about a nasty, zombie-like virus that spreads through verbal terms of endearment. A laboured, surreal read but worth the effort for its unique narrative and deeply unsettling outcome.
The Collected Strange Stories (1999)
Robert Aickman
Cryptic, terrifying, pessimistic and without equal – Robert Aickman's stories are all of these things and more. From the 1940s through to the '80s, Aickman single-handedly broke the mould of the modern ghost story and created some truly strange-yet-convincing tales, including Ravissante, The Trains and Into The Wood. This recent collection should be considered essential reading for all ghost story connoisseurs.
The Descent (1999)
Jeff Long
As the startling news that Hell is an actual place full of not-exactly-people-who-wishus- unutterable-harm spreads across the Earth's surface, the US responds (naturally enough) by declaring full-scale Vietnam-style war on Those Below. Long's mixture of concise, semi-poetic flow and academic-level research skills pulls his readers along like subterranean undertow. This is some damned brutal stuff.
A Life in the Cinema (2000)
Mick Garris
A Life in the Cinema is a collection of fearlessly perverse (or perversely fearless) offerings from Masters of Horror creator Mick Garris – surprised? Warning: one jawdropping passage, involving a particularly nasty creature ruining a particularly pleasurable dream, in the title story actually caused me to bellow “Oh, Fuck Me!” on a crowded Toronto streetcar. Waitaminnit, warning? More like recommendation.
Under the Skin (2000)
Michel Faber
The jacket copy on this book declares that it's a novel that defies categorization, and for once the blurb doesn't lie. Parts mystery, thriller, horror, and science fiction, it's an exceedingly well-written story that flirts with the unreliable narrator device to superb effect. This totally bizarre, nearly impossible to describe novel gets weirder and weirder until the reader turns the pages, slack-jawed, wondering where the hell it's going next. Literary horror at its absolute finest.
The Straw Men (2001)
Michael Marshall (a.k.a. Michael Marshall Smith)
Declared a masterpiece by Stephen King,this stunningly fierce serial killer book concerns a bizarre ancient cult called the “The Straw Men”, which has members who consider themselves to be above other human beings. Marshall succeeds here in concocting a strongly written paranoiac's nightmare, and this is only the first book in the trilogy!
A Choir of Ill Children (2003)
Tom Piccirilli
Haunting and unbelievably lyrical, A Choir of Ill Children infuses Piccirilli's (RM#46) exceptionally poetic and literate style with all the strange occurrences, bizarre characters, physical deformities and supernatural intrigue one expects in a Southern Gothic yarn. A familial tale of a swampland community in decline, it's stunning and unforgettable. Expect to become hopelessly lost in these pages.
The Fear Report (2004)
Elizabeth Massie
Massie balances a delicate narrative voice with an unflinching eye for grisly detail in this hefty volume containing cutting-edge tales that probe the monster in man. Stephen, a Grand Guignol love story involving an emotionally abused nurse and an amputee who is little more than a head and torso hooked-up to a life-support system, remains one of the most unnerving novellas in contemporary horror.
House of Leaves (2000)
Mark Z. Danielewski
In this challenging and intriguing work, Mark Z. Danielewski weaves a complex tale of surrealist horror told through the use of a palimpsest – a manuscript written over many times, with footnotes from its writer. Essentially two tales, the piece is divided between a horror story and the notes of the manuscript's editor, Johnny Truant, who discovered and stole the pages from its author, a blind eccentric named Zampanò, after his death. The monograph concerns a documentary film called The Navidson Report, in which Pulitzer Prize-winning news photographer Will Navidson and his family take up residence in a supernatural Virginia mansion and discover its inner dimensions measure more than its exterior. Countless hallways and closets appear as the house continually reconfigures itself. It's seemingly alive, and eventually drives an expedition team, hired by Navidson, to madness and murder. Meanwhile, Truant, who works in a tattoo shop by day, by night inexplicably finds and sleeps with every woman who helped Zampanò draw up the manuscript. While the Truant notes offer little in the way of insight to the mysterious mechanics of the dwelling, the manuscript itself is a frightening cerebral horror story, littered with poems, photographs, scratched-out notes scientific lists, quotes and more. Without doubt, House of Leaves is a complicated book, but well worth the effort it takes to calculate its tale. It's also the singular cover story we've ever done on a novel at Rue Morgue. 'Nuff said.
|
|
