10 Psychological Novels Guaranted To Mess With Your Mind

5. House of Leaves By Mark Z. Danielewski

How does one even go about describing House of Leaves? It's less like reading a novel and more like trying to make your way through 700 pages of strangely organised text with a bulldozer. It's a prime example of ergodic literature, and is intertwined into three parts, focusing around the story of what is essentially about a haunted house. It's a bloody confusing read, but get all the way through it and you'll realise it was totally worth it. The writing style, and the flipping between time and narrator, plus the hundreds of footnotes throughout the book might appear to detract from the plot, but actually, all the little bits of 'paper' that have been mashed together ARE the plot. It's SO CONFUSING. The main reason this book will mess you up is because so many of the characters within House of Leaves are totally messed up themselves. And also because the layout of the book is so mind-boggling. It's totally different to many other books from this side of 2000, and the descriptions of craziness in it will make you, the reader, feel crazy as well. Not one to be missed.