Deeply unsatisfying.

I originally started reading this novel almost 10 years ago and it spooked me (despite the nonsense about being able to accurately determine a 1/4” difference between the inside and outside of a building).

I finally picked it up again and while I applaud the effort with the story within a story and the myriad references (although at times I felt Danielewski was up his own ass with the world’s supposed excessive obsession with the Navidson Tapes).

I put it down a couple months ago because jumping back and forth between Zampano’s main story (thesis??) and the Johnny Truant side story was exhausting and confusing.

I came back to it with the thought to just blast through the Zampano story and ignore the Truant stuff and for the most part I did. Previously, I wanted to read all the references and this go around I just skimmed them and powered through to the end.

And while the Zampano story about the Navidsons is infinitely more interesting than Truant’s, even that ended up neatly tied up with a bow.

Truant’s was haphazard and had its own tidy solution.

Both of which were at odds to the mystery eked out from the rest of the book and thus, very disappointing.

I’m annoyed that it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped or been lead to believe and that I spent so much time on it.

Early on, I had the vague notion I would come back to this book over and over again to try to gain further understanding of the story, but at the end, I mostly flipped though the Appendices and decided I was done. Some used book store will get my copy.