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Angel House
After crossing a vast inland sea in an ark called ANGEL HOUSE, Professor Squimbop docks on a distant shore. As soon as his anchor makes purchase, a town sprouts up that may or may not encapsulate all of existence. At the behest of some distant master, he embarks into this town to teach the children about death, a concept they've never encountered before. What follows is a surreal epic about friendship, childhood, solitude, creation, and the darkest realms of obsessive nostalgia. Both tender and depraved, familiar and bizarre, it is an utterly original coming-of-age story that questions how we can establish a shared reality when meaning was, is, and will always be malleable.
426 pages, Paperback
First published June 13, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 13, 2022
A brilliant, maddening kaleidoscope of the obscene the mundane the nostalgic the impossible. Infinitely layered with meaning that goes nowhere, rife with the symbolism of the gutter.
April 28, 2020
Angel House hooked me at the onset and held me throughout its thought-provoking story. It's rich with drama, surrealism, and complex (but always compelling) aesthetics. Rice's ability to connect the reader with the cast of characters on a deep level seemed to tailor the book's town to me. I feel as though the experiences in the novel stem from the unifying struggle we share in our quest to bring form to the abstractions that dwell within us. This sense is not limited to the artist's goals, but extends to all people attempting to make their mark on the ephemeral world. The novel has an epic feel, high emotional stakes, and a predilection to challenge the reader in a way that moves beyond the pages. Rice's prose is powerful, visceral, and poetic. As a longtime friend and reader of Rice, I served as an early reader for ANGEL HOUSE before publication. I definitely recommend it.
February 18, 2019
Angel House creates a unique and hard-to-describe atmosphere that stays with the reader long after the book is finished. The author delights in shining a new light on the familiar from an angle that brings out its grotesque form. Highly recommended.
February 20, 2019
Wild stuff - strap in. Really impressive cast of characters, all of whom are interesting, all of whom are unusual - very highly recommend. The author must really live in that world, seems to know it well!
November 16, 2021
ANGEL HOUSE is the kind of novel that will mean something different to everyone who reads it, and indeed, will likely mean something different to me if I read it again in a few years, and yet again if I read it a third time somewhere down the line (all distinct possibilities). Because of this, I'll go ahead and readily admit that all my attempts to describe it here may fall short (and that this first one may have been heavily influenced by the charming, rudimentary maps of the book's central, inescapably small town provided on the opening pages), but I often found myself thinking of ANGEL HOUSE like a surrealist take on an old school, godview RPG - like if the original Legend of Zelda wandered over into Twin Peaks, Washington - its various, vaguely ominous locales emerging fully formed from the Earth, and rotating around, in and out of existence, only as characters happen upon them screen by screen, page by page.
And boy, do those characters cover a lot of ground for being trapped in such a limited, limiting locale. Some have been there their whole lives. Others left and came back. Some have designs on destroying the town (Professor Squimbop). Others are working to preserve it (the Mayor), immortalize it (James, a filmmaker), and even recreate it (Ben, an architect). But they're all there, circling one another (and the drain) in their fitful, futile efforts to find meaning in a place that means something different to all of them. Often doubled, and even tripled, via a literary mechanism that dabbles in both time travel and astral projection without ever really copping to being either, author David Leo Rice's eccentric cast of characters coexist with one another, as well as themselves at different ages, and in different places, all at once, and yet somehow still interact with, and even through their future and past selves, all without ever getting particularly convoluted or even feeling all that hard to visualize. Oh, and there are no women. I'm not really sure why. I could speculate, but it's one of those things I mentioned earlier that will probably mean something a little different to everyone, including me the next time I read it (a prospect which feels increasingly likely, the further I get into writing this review).
Anyway, Rice uses this ingenious technique (which he may have also invented. I don't know. I haven't read all the books. But I've definitely never seen it before.) to create a kind of flattened multiverse through which to explore the states of constant flux between youthful ambition and adult compromise, even making room for physical manifestations of the countless roads not taken along that all-too-familiar journey. In this way, ANGEL HOUSE unfolds and expands exponentially, even as its suburban walls seem to be forever closing in, drawing you into its intimate, infinite snare trap world via maps and legends, signs and wonders, memories and dreams, and then all but inviting you to project onto it whatever experience of smalltown life you already hold inside yourself. The sub-weird and the blankheads; the blindspot and the inland sea; the hibernation and the reunion; DUST HOUSE and ANGEL HOUSE; Rice's mystical matrix of signifiers will feel familiar to anyone who has ever lived anywhere (ie - all of us), and through a kind of generous, authorial magic, your particular anywhere will begin to feel like the very place he's writing about; the very source of the book in your hands.
Warmly, squirmily alive - practically rising up out of the paper like an enchanted pop-up book, and then steadily folding back in on itself the further you go along - this shifty, slippery, and infinitely mutable text can feel, at times, like a chronicle of its own perennial cycle of creation and disintegration - a kind of mobius meditation on the nature of life and art. It's in a weird font. It's got hand-drawn illustrations that correspond to its primary characters. There's a really unusual little hiccup where, for a while at least, the even numbered pages are on the right, and then somewhere along the way they switch back to the left. The whole thing is a little reminiscent of those ancient, wizarding tomes that appear blank at first glance, only for ornate, illuminated text to appear on the page to which they're opened. You might find yourself wondering "if I flip back fast enough, will the words I just read still be there?" It's a wild trip. But if you're like me, you'll come away with more to ponder and wonder about - laugh and cry about (because, for all this talk of the strange and surreal, it is also really funny in places, and brutally sad in others) - from this mirific work than you can possibly digest in one go-around. And now that we've arrived at the end, I think I can say with absolute certainty that I'll be reading it again in a few years. I already can't wait to find out what it will mean to me.
And boy, do those characters cover a lot of ground for being trapped in such a limited, limiting locale. Some have been there their whole lives. Others left and came back. Some have designs on destroying the town (Professor Squimbop). Others are working to preserve it (the Mayor), immortalize it (James, a filmmaker), and even recreate it (Ben, an architect). But they're all there, circling one another (and the drain) in their fitful, futile efforts to find meaning in a place that means something different to all of them. Often doubled, and even tripled, via a literary mechanism that dabbles in both time travel and astral projection without ever really copping to being either, author David Leo Rice's eccentric cast of characters coexist with one another, as well as themselves at different ages, and in different places, all at once, and yet somehow still interact with, and even through their future and past selves, all without ever getting particularly convoluted or even feeling all that hard to visualize. Oh, and there are no women. I'm not really sure why. I could speculate, but it's one of those things I mentioned earlier that will probably mean something a little different to everyone, including me the next time I read it (a prospect which feels increasingly likely, the further I get into writing this review).
Anyway, Rice uses this ingenious technique (which he may have also invented. I don't know. I haven't read all the books. But I've definitely never seen it before.) to create a kind of flattened multiverse through which to explore the states of constant flux between youthful ambition and adult compromise, even making room for physical manifestations of the countless roads not taken along that all-too-familiar journey. In this way, ANGEL HOUSE unfolds and expands exponentially, even as its suburban walls seem to be forever closing in, drawing you into its intimate, infinite snare trap world via maps and legends, signs and wonders, memories and dreams, and then all but inviting you to project onto it whatever experience of smalltown life you already hold inside yourself. The sub-weird and the blankheads; the blindspot and the inland sea; the hibernation and the reunion; DUST HOUSE and ANGEL HOUSE; Rice's mystical matrix of signifiers will feel familiar to anyone who has ever lived anywhere (ie - all of us), and through a kind of generous, authorial magic, your particular anywhere will begin to feel like the very place he's writing about; the very source of the book in your hands.
Warmly, squirmily alive - practically rising up out of the paper like an enchanted pop-up book, and then steadily folding back in on itself the further you go along - this shifty, slippery, and infinitely mutable text can feel, at times, like a chronicle of its own perennial cycle of creation and disintegration - a kind of mobius meditation on the nature of life and art. It's in a weird font. It's got hand-drawn illustrations that correspond to its primary characters. There's a really unusual little hiccup where, for a while at least, the even numbered pages are on the right, and then somewhere along the way they switch back to the left. The whole thing is a little reminiscent of those ancient, wizarding tomes that appear blank at first glance, only for ornate, illuminated text to appear on the page to which they're opened. You might find yourself wondering "if I flip back fast enough, will the words I just read still be there?" It's a wild trip. But if you're like me, you'll come away with more to ponder and wonder about - laugh and cry about (because, for all this talk of the strange and surreal, it is also really funny in places, and brutally sad in others) - from this mirific work than you can possibly digest in one go-around. And now that we've arrived at the end, I think I can say with absolute certainty that I'll be reading it again in a few years. I already can't wait to find out what it will mean to me.
June 17, 2019
A bizarre and captivating story with an interesting interplay between a few different ideas: there's a cautious relationship between two old friends, complicated by their divergent histories; a tenuous balance between local and global forces (sometimes helpful, sometimes threatening); a woozy back-and-forth between the fever-dreams of the narrators and the truly fucked-up world they inhabit.
Check this book out - it's a great dive into a surreal and yet unsettlingly (sometimes ashamedly) familiar place.
Check this book out - it's a great dive into a surreal and yet unsettlingly (sometimes ashamedly) familiar place.
November 5, 2019
Angel House is an eerie and melancholy read. Its protagonists, two best friends, exist simultaneously as nine-year-olds dreaming of making movies, and twenty-nine-year-olds just returned from some City to which they had escaped. It captures the barrenness and horror of being stuck in a small town, and the monstrous strangeness of trying to proverbially "go home again," with fiercely inventive and grotesque (sometimes disturbing) images. And along with the horror elements there's a lot of genuine heart. I recommend this for anyone looking for something really original.
June 3, 2022
There's only one town to escape or embrace. Rice's compendium of this singular town—with its school, its hotel, its movie store—is unyielding in its pull. Much as Angel House's protagonists (drifters, loners, psychically-liked duos) are drawn into vortexes of their own curiosities and obsessions, the book itself pulls you toward new portals of thought.
There's nothing quite like Angel House; one part uncanny adventure, one part psychic horror show, one part urtext of a new mythology. The characters are vivid and insane in their singular lusts. Filmmakers, architects, radio hosts, and a singular professor wade through the psychogeography, as desperate for meaning as they are for connection.
Drugged by nostalgia or driven by the madness of forgetting, Angel House spirals out over the span of a year (until time is lost entirely), as the world shapeshifts toward new uncanny peaks and valleys. Reunions are had, dreams are lost, deserts are crossed, and a town is rendered more real than most you could ever walk through. The town in Angel House may be stripped of traditional reality, but at its center is a shared reality, a desire toward a larger meaning that the self: sacrifice and connection and unhindered creativity. To fulfill that desire, you may have to lose yourself entirely, embracing the weird, formless future.
There's nothing quite like Angel House; one part uncanny adventure, one part psychic horror show, one part urtext of a new mythology. The characters are vivid and insane in their singular lusts. Filmmakers, architects, radio hosts, and a singular professor wade through the psychogeography, as desperate for meaning as they are for connection.
Drugged by nostalgia or driven by the madness of forgetting, Angel House spirals out over the span of a year (until time is lost entirely), as the world shapeshifts toward new uncanny peaks and valleys. Reunions are had, dreams are lost, deserts are crossed, and a town is rendered more real than most you could ever walk through. The town in Angel House may be stripped of traditional reality, but at its center is a shared reality, a desire toward a larger meaning that the self: sacrifice and connection and unhindered creativity. To fulfill that desire, you may have to lose yourself entirely, embracing the weird, formless future.
March 26, 2020
Angel House is a book like no other. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. A darkly comic and psychedelic journey through a dilapidated nostalgic dream/nightmare world. I enjoyed it immensely and laughed often.
Professor Squimbop is a unique and refreshing character (I hesitate to call him a villain). If there is more Squimbop literature, which there deserves to be, I will devour it as he devours us. J.L. Wind's speech is one of the funniest things I've read and will stick with me for a long time. The characters in this book are irresistible and unforgettable. I was left feeling I'd been initiated into a new group of extremely grotesque and interesting friends.
David's prose is spellbinding. As soon as you start reading, you are transported to a strange (but vivid) town that exists within the bounds of its own weird dream logic. The sky, the land, the sea, even the subterranean --David explores and brings to life all the grimy crevices of the town and paints a picture so clear you can't help but feel you've been drawn in to become a resident, wishing all the while you could escape, though escape you cannot.
Angel House is a huge achievement! In the words of the Professor...
F**k you forever,
Jon
Professor Squimbop is a unique and refreshing character (I hesitate to call him a villain). If there is more Squimbop literature, which there deserves to be, I will devour it as he devours us. J.L. Wind's speech is one of the funniest things I've read and will stick with me for a long time. The characters in this book are irresistible and unforgettable. I was left feeling I'd been initiated into a new group of extremely grotesque and interesting friends.
David's prose is spellbinding. As soon as you start reading, you are transported to a strange (but vivid) town that exists within the bounds of its own weird dream logic. The sky, the land, the sea, even the subterranean --David explores and brings to life all the grimy crevices of the town and paints a picture so clear you can't help but feel you've been drawn in to become a resident, wishing all the while you could escape, though escape you cannot.
Angel House is a huge achievement! In the words of the Professor...
F**k you forever,
Jon
April 29, 2020
In this novel, characters who exist in superposition attend a reunion in a town that may just be a template (since most places and businesses have purposefully generic names), where everything is identifiable and grotesquely defamiliarized, since everything seems to exist as a nightmare version of all that gooey nostalgia you have for your old stomping grounds, which are, by the way, being haunted by a terrifying figure who has no analogue, but who does have a goofy name: Professor Squimbop. And, sure, there's surreal imagery galore here, but any book that can gross me out the way this book can, after a lifetime of Cronenberg, Lynch, and John Waters, sure is doing lots and lots of things right. Trigger warning for anyone who can't take brownie batter being repurposed for cringe-inducing, aberrant acts that make you feel like maybe a shower or even a steam-bath couldn't get you clean, naw, you'll be needing a Clive Barker-style flaying. Don't worry, you can get pancakes afterwards.
May 10, 2024
“The Dream of Escape died in you so it could live in us”
I am so sad I finished this book, I wish I could experience reading this for the first time again. Such a brilliant, surreal, and highly original journey through the “darkest realms of obsessive nostalgia”. The characters felt scarily familiar, especially as someone who grew up in a small town. The town relies on ritual to keep chaos at bay as the reader travels through different members of the community who are coming to terms with existence and death. I have not come across something quite like this. Def in the all time favorite list now. The Pretend Movie deserves all the Oscars.
I am so sad I finished this book, I wish I could experience reading this for the first time again. Such a brilliant, surreal, and highly original journey through the “darkest realms of obsessive nostalgia”. The characters felt scarily familiar, especially as someone who grew up in a small town. The town relies on ritual to keep chaos at bay as the reader travels through different members of the community who are coming to terms with existence and death. I have not come across something quite like this. Def in the all time favorite list now. The Pretend Movie deserves all the Oscars.
June 21, 2025
A consciousness altering experience (which I love). Made we want to wander the outskirts and experience the world in a different way. Angel House takes dream logic seriously without the reader being left feeling aimless or confused. Truly immersive and heartfelt. Get this book!
September 26, 2025
I keep coming back to this book, it haunts me in the best way. Burrowed into my brain for the better. Cannot recommend enough!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews