Okay, I can now say I've read this book. Was it scary? It had its moments, and maybe if I read it all in just a few, long, sittings I would have gotten into it more and therefore gotten into my head. Yet the book itself prevents you from reading it quickly or settling down into it. Your reading is constantly jarred by footnotes or back and forth between Zampano's writing and Truant's spiraling anecdotes, but that doesn't really scare me, it just annoys me.

So yeah, not really my type of horror, but at least I can now say I've read it when I see all those "best horror ever written" threads and whatnot. I guess I'm not "intellectual" enough for this kind of horror?

I'd first read parts of this whilst at uni, but I didn't really 'get' it. (I'll be honest, I was trying to impress a boy, who said that he loved the book. A decade on, I'm glad things didn't work out between us!) I do understand the book now, but feel it's not quite as clever as it pretends to be. It IS fascinating, especially the way the whole book reflects the eponymous house: you get disoriented in it, never quite sure how close to finishing you are, or whereabouts in the plot you are at any given point. But it is an exhausting read! It's disturbing in a number of ways, and for the most part, not enjoyable, I found. It is funny in plaes, especially when you realise the author has duped you, the reader, in a number of places. It will stay with me, that's for sure, but I'm pretty sure I won't re-read this again.

I honestly can’t decide if I just finished a masterpiece, the most pretentious novel I’ve ever read, or a masterclass in satire. At first I was genuinely impressed by how the author had come up with two very compelling intertwining stories, and then made both of them needlessly difficult to read. The farther along I got into the novel however, the more I realized how effective that technique was at getting me into the proper mindset to fully enjoy the stories. Multiple times I thought to myself “This feels like it’s wrapping up but there are still hundreds of pages left? How?” And then there would be fifty pages with less then a sentence on them in a row. Answered that question very quickly. I would definitely recommend this purely based on how unique the reading experience is. I do not know if I’ll ever read it again, but the journey will stick with me.

My jaw is in the abyss. This book made me feel like I was losing my mind. IT EVEN GAVE ME NIGHTMARES. that's how you know it is a true masterpiece. It's also kind of fucking hilarious.

The DEAPTH is stunning and leaves me speechless. It's impossible to put down and I ended up wondering what was important. Does this text have a double meaning? Is there some sort of message I'm missing?

It's WILD that a book can drive you this crazy and make you afraid of your own house. It really has a way of making you feel so uneasy and that feeling shows up any time you open a door and stare into a dark closet or look down a fucking hallway.

This book certainly left it's mark on me and I certainly have my theories about it

A for ambition.
A for creativity.
A for creative use of the printed page
(ie - writing about climbing a ladder with print
in rungs from bottom to top.)
C for compelling storytelling.

As much as I admired this crazily multifaceted story within a story within a story about a house that's bigger on the inside than the outside, told by multiple narrators with stellar vocabularies - I felt distanced by the faux historical commentaries and the choppiness.

Percentage of the story I probably didn't get on a first
reading - 50%
Percent I enjoyed it - 65%