Dionaea House

With CONTINUING COVERAGE of the best book in the world (ahahahaha), today's article is also about a house and about people disappearing into said house, and possibly being eaten.

Dionaea House is sort of House of Leaves Lite. They both involve houses, they both involve people going into places that shouldn't be there in said houses, and people die as a result. At some point, children are involved.

(screencap from website Dionaea House)

FUN FUN FUN for the whole family. 8D

I remember reading it off another blog, years and years ago. It comes years (I assume) after House of Leaves, so I can see a sort of influence. But where Danielewski's house cannot be defined (not a house of God, Navidson argues, but perhaps the house IS God. Samael, eat your heart out), the dionaea house simply eats people. Or not.

Uh. Spoilers?

I did find the whole site/story very engaging, though I read House of Leaves after I read Dionaea House, and when going back, its not as scary. But I think it still holds some merit. The story is given to you in a correspondence between two friends, Mark and Eric. Someone they used to know, Andrew, walked into a diner, shot two people, then committed suicide. Mark takes it upon himself to get to the bottom of the incident, rooted in a house.

Therein lies the rub, lunies. Already we know how lethal these places can be. Especially when the house seems to move of its own volition, locations, not just settling. Mark's correspondence starts with emails to Eric, but once his investigation takes off and he starts searching for the address of the house, the correspondence comes in the form of phone text messages, eerie messages that take hours to be received. What's going on with this house, what is it trying to do, what is this door that opens (the door of candy and cake, as you'll see later), and why does it seem to devour its inhabitants? Mark seems to relate the house to the Venus Fly Trap, dionaea muscipula, from which the house gets its name. It lures its prey in, and then, of course, devours them.

(pic from wiki commons)

Its all a cut and dry sort of story and plot, elementary compared to Danielewski's work, but its not without its merits. It, after all, is told through letters (not unlike the Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence) and text messages, and later, as you follow the links and further investigation left off by Mark, blogs. Its an interesting use of the internet and hyperlinking, which is not unlike footnotes. However, unlike House of Leaves, it does try to go out of its way to explain everything once you go far enough out in the links. I wouldn't say it makes the story less likeable, but don't go in expecting the polished and superb tapestry that Danielewski wove. It, like the book, takes the voice of different characters (Mark, his girlfriend, Eric, even a babysitter), but unlike Danielewski's obvious skill in crafting the voices of other characters (Johnny, Pelafina, Zampano), Dionaea's characters are a bit flatter, and not much skill is involved (the babysitter is, sadly, obviously written by someone who is anything but; the artifice of the speech patterns of a young girl isn't as well crafted as it could be). This is no real rap against the author (or authors, depending on what you want to believe), but it does show less skill than Danielewski.

I could go on and on about the dynamism of internet based fiction, but I'll simply leave you with this. Following the clues to the house and peeling the layers of the people effected by the murderous residence. Its a fun little romp through horror and suspense and mystery. Recommended.

--Dio (10/13/10)

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