The novel is a surreal palimpsest of terror and erudition, surely destined for cult status....The story of the house is stitched together from disparate accounts, until the experience becomes somewhat like stumbling into Borges's Library of Babel...The horror story -- is a tour de force." Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times On the figurative side, the book still won't hold your hand and spell out what it all means in flashing neon. That's up to you to figure out by gathering all the evidence together and deconstructing the book on several different levels by asking yourself what's true and what isn't, what matters and what doesn't, what's literal and what's figurative, what's the metanarrative, what's the subtext. Ultimately it's up to you to decide when you're satisfied with your answer. So Johnny finds this manuscript, reads it, edits it, adds his own footnotes relating to research he's done on Zampano's life and the manuscript contents (translations of foreign phrases, for instance), but also personal tangents about his own life and stream of consciousness ramblings. In the prologue where he explains how he found the manuscript, he also says that The Navidson Record doesn't actually exist. Johnny's editors also appear in footnotes and in the first say they have never met Johnny Truant in person, only communicating via letters and rare phone calls. Weird, right? Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent—it renders most other fiction meaningless." —Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho

Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times A] tour de force first novel. [It] can keep you up at nights and make you never look at a closet in quite the same way again . . . Staggeringly good fun." The pathways that we are taken along are presented to us in such a way as to force us to feel the way that the story moves, not just read it. We feel the helplessness, disorientation, distraction, boredom, hope, melancholy, and sorrow of these characters because we are following the same paths as them in an attempt to understand what is, in all truth, beyond understanding - ourselves. Our guilt and our grief. Who is real and who is not doesn't matter - the toll is just the same.

Our appendices, the index, and Pelafina's letters provide a deeper understanding of some of the recurring themes throughout both of these stories, while also continuing to call in to question which aspects are real or if all of the characters really participated in this authorship, which ultimately leads to the question of - does it really matter? We are treated early on to Johnny making the bold declaration that he [added the word "water" in to TNR before the word "heater." (hide spoiler)]. Authorship has lost its sacred hold on authority, and even the "contrary evidence" to TNR's seeming non-existence calls in to question just who is the liar here. Now, for the first time, this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and newly added second and third appendices.

Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story-of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams. A great novel. A phenomenal debut. Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent--it renders most other fiction meaningless. One can imagine Thomas Pynchon, J. G. Ballard, Stephen King, and David Foster Wallace bowing at Danielewski's feet, choking with astonishment, surprise, laughter, awe." This is not a horror novel, nor is it a mystery novel or a fantasy novel. This book is, among many other things, a personal story about the author's parents presented as experimental literary fiction that's thinly veiled as a horror novel. Confused? Good, stay that way for now, and don't think too hard about what I just said. I'm not that into horror novels, and I generally like post-modern and experimental stuff, and I knew what I was getting into when I bought this. Know what you're getting into, that's all I'm trying to say. To that end, I've ended up buying different copies of this book, like a madman collecting any copy of JD Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" they could get their hands on, or a person who absolutely could not would not leave the house without a pair of gloves to shield their hands from the world. Whenever I mentioned the book to a friend, they usually ended up being the recipient of the copy I bought.

THE MIND-BENDING CULT CLASSIC ABOUT A HOUSE THAT’S LARGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE • A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel. TNR's central story is that of Will Navidson and his family moving into a house on Ash Tree Lane and, upon their return from a wedding, discovering a space that did not exist before in their home. Upon inspection, Will finds that the interior dimensions of the house exceed the exterior, and so he sets to work to "eliminate that fraction of an inch." He is ultimately unsuccessful, even with the assistance of his brother, Tom Navidson, and friend, Billy Reston, a renowned University professor. Eventually, the house even offers up a more confounding enigma in the form of a hallway appearing in their living room that stretches into a space far beyond any of the outer limits of the home. We see Explorations staged, a crew formed, and the slow, maddening fray of familial bonds take hold as the house exerts its will upon Navidson and everybody else. It draws him in to a maze of ever-shifting walls, standing as though to say that its existence was never a question, but its purpose can never be found.While many have attempted to describe this book, I believe that words fail in the face of a request for synopsis. The headaches implicit with just attempting such a feat can be debilitating. I've heard it described as, "A story about a guy who may or may not be real that finds a dissertation written by a guy who may or may not be real about a man who may or may not be real who discovers that his house hosts a labyrinth." I believe that's still putting it generously, but causes a headache in-and-of itself. Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore." -Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn Johnny's friend, Lude, knows Zampano because he lives in the same apartment building. The old man, ominously, tells Lude he's going to die soon, and does. After the body is gone, Lude and Johnny sneak into the apartment to take a look around at Zampano's things. They find a crazy manuscript, which Johnny takes home with him.