This book was amazing; life-changing. This book was terrible; waste of time. I read this book. I did not read this book. I am terrified of this book, the pages cut my fingers off, I died from from blood loss. My fingers were never cut, I didn't die from blood loss. Of course, there is no book. There never was a book.

2 stars? 3 stars? 2.5 stars? I have resisted reading this book for a long time simply because I do not generally go for pomo books. In my opinion, if a book can't stand on the strength of it's plot and must resort to gimmicks, then it's probably not that great of a book. In some ways that holds true for this book. I actually quite enjoyed the Zampano account of the Navidson Record about a house with an ever changing internal structure. The part of this book detailing the excursions by the characters within the house was enjoyable and immensely readable.

But then this book has all the additional ramblings and footnotes written by Johnny Truant. Truant's contributions are incoherent, inconsistent, full of his and his friend Lupe's sexual conquests. For me, Danielewski's inclusion of this aspect of the story was distracting and annoying. I get that, for some people in this story, just reading an account of the Navidson Record can absorb and consume their life to the point that the horror of the story becomes a very real thing. Johnny Truant is one of these people, and his rambling footnotes are in fact a record of his descent into madness, which resulted from the discovery of Zampano's extensive cataloging and research into the Navidson Record. It was still an annoying aspect of this book for me.

Danielewski, the author, should certainly get a massive amount of credit just for writing and assembling this massive story. This book contains an astounding level of detail and imagination. This alone probably grants my rating an additional full star. Sometimes that creativity gets a bit much and it was very difficult to be sure where a footnote or sentence continued. Sometimes it was necessary to skip several pages ahead, and then read backwards page by page. I don't know that these oddities contributed positively to the overall reading experience.