Describing the basic premise of the book makes it sound somewhat ridiculous. It is about a man who finds and edits an exhaustive movie review. This review is of a documentary (or perhaps horror) film called The Navidson Record. However, as the man, Truant, reads and edits the review things in his life tend to get stranger and stranger. The Navidson Record doesn't exist within the world of the book (nor in real life) which makes the story all the more intriguing. The main portion of the book is the review of the movie and the story of the editor is told in footnotes.
The book has a beautifully executed gradual ramp up to anything scary, in the beginning it is much more of a mystery than anything else. As the histories of the characters are slowly revealed, one step at a time, the book really grows.
This book also, in the world of ebooks and pdfs, truly embraces the printed medium. The book itself is such a critical part of the feel of the story, from the small touches like certain words being consistently printed in different colors, to the big touches like strange page layouts and multipage upside down footnotes. The very layout of the book tells part of the story.
The book is eccentric in other ways too. It is over 700 pages, 200 of which are appendices and an index. The appendices have random additional information, some of it relevant, some of it not. The index is another beast entirely. Some parts have interesting
I will say that the story of the editor did not interest me anywhere near as much as the story of the characters in The Navidson Record but it provided an interesting break from the main story and some of the most pervasive imagery, the parts that literally kept me up at night, were in the sections written by Truant.
I feel like there is almost nothing that I can say that will truly do this book justice, but I can say for a certainty, it is a unique literary experience. This is my favorite book that I have read so far in 2012.
Overall, I would give this book a 98%.
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