There are a couple sections where the print appears backwards and you have to hold it up to a mirror to read it. The book’s design manages to suggest that. Some of the pieces of the manuscript were written on scraps of paper, pasted over other pieces of paper. The “gimmick” of the book is that it gives you the feeling that you are looking through a pile of unorganized papers. Truant here appears to be dissembling …” It makes you wonder: what happened to Truant? Did he go mad trying to put together the manuscript? Johnny Truant interjects himself, and then, we don’t know when, it is apparent that yet another person has taken over the manuscript, and they, too, add corrective notes to Truant’s footnotes: “Mr. Slowly, as you read the manuscript, the footnotes begin to take over the page. He begins to research the manuscript itself, and he adds his own footnotes to explain other footnotes. Zampano’s manuscript is a scholarly treatise about the “Navidson” house, and the manuscript is found in bits and pieces, with whole sections missing, footnotes unexplained, and Johnny Truant becomes obsessed with the story. And – he comes across a manuscript written by a blind man who is now dead, named Zampano.
He has stripper girlfriends, and a rough past.
The real lead character is a guy named Johnny Truant who works in a tattoo parlor. I say the book is ABOUT this couple, but that’s not quite true. They could explore it for thousands of years and never get to the bottom of it. This becomes more and more apparent as the book goes on, and basically, they discover ETERNITY is inside their house. Meaning: the INSIDE of the house is larger than the outside frame. Doors open on hallways which should not be there, hallways that would go off into the backyard if they were real.
The book is about a couple who uproot themselves from their big city life, buy a house in the suburbs somewhere, move in, and over time, realize that there is something … off about the house. I would love to hear from other people who read this book. It is a fantastic story, one I could not put down, one that I lived in my dark imagination after I put the stupid thing down, AND it has some startlingly good writing. But this book is far more than its gimmick. The phenomenal thing about this book is that there is a “gimmick” to it, and normally I hate books with gimmicks (or, I hate books that are JUST the ‘gimmick’). Spatial disorientation nightmares, which is what the book is all about. This is one of the few books that has given me actual nightmares. Uhm, pardon my French, but this book is a total mind f***!!!!! Has anyone else read it? I LOVED it … if by “loved” I mean: “horrified and riveted”.
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