The power that Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves exercises over the reader's imagination can perhaps be attributed to the disturbing simplicity of the novel's pivotal event: the sudden and impossible appearance of a cold, black hallway in an outside wall of Will Navidson's family home. Yet the unsettling nature of this extravagant spatial anomaly is immeasurably increased by its location, for the hallway is not found in the back of a cupboard or previously unexplored basement but in the family's living room. By juxtaposing the dark hallway with the actual and metaphorical light of the living room, the novel suggests that some unspeakable horror lies at the heart of this particular American family and, by implication, at the heart of all families.

It is important to emphasize that the novel never accounts for the existence of Navidson's hallway and the infinite corridors and rooms to...