House of Holes

By Nicholson Baker

Visit the House of Holes, where the motto is PLEASURE FIRST, and discover a solution to every sexual problem, insight into every sexual intrigue, or play out your greatest sexual fantasy. Men can begin with a 'good, friendly penis scrub', take the magic sperm sniff test, or visit the Porndecahedron.

Greedy women can visit the Hall of the Penises, shy women can order a partner with a 'voluntary head detachment', curious couples can investigate each other further with a 'cross crotchal interplasmic transfer'.

But ladies, watch out for the Pearloiner, who might just steal from you what you cherish most …

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Aug 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9780857206626

Nicholson Baker

Nicholson Baker is the author of nine novels and four works of nonfiction, including Double Fold, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and House of Holes, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and The New York Review of Books. He lives in Maine with his family.

Reviews for House of Holes

[kropferama · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Funny in spots but tedious after a while. Very loose connections -- no plot.

[billycongo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I'm the right person for this book. At first it seemed very inventive, but then it was just sex, sex, sex. I needed it to have some sort of purpose to it, otherwise it's just masturbation material.

[ron18-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm happy to be in a place where I see this book as an appreciable fun piece of fantasy that makes a light (and somehow purely wholesome) cartoon of sex, gender, and the things that turn people on whether they want them to or not. Others may argue the point - but I feel exceptionally mature and grounded in that appreciation, recognizing that play is life - and sex is a game imposed by nature.
The best comparison I can think of is Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. I'm pretty sure Roald Dahl would have gotten a kick out of it. The characters are caring, considerate, tender, friendly, and well-mannered - they are a reversal of the seedy abuse of power that features in a lot of sexual fantasy. But don't let that description fool you into thinking it isn't outrageous and over-the-top. I find it to be an uplifting (heh) healthy psychedelic journey. A massively sexual episode of The Love Boat. The character arcs aren't deep, but they are endearing and revelatory. They make valuable caricature of (purely, for better or worse) heteronormative ideals. A much appreciated experiment.

[athurman-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Happy, hilariously horny romp. Kind of an awkward choice for subway commute reading, but I managed it without getting arrested. Read this right after Arcadia--the House of Holes is the more appealing utopia.

[librarianbryan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I only got half way through this because I was BILLED for it by my library for keeping it too long. That made for a great circulation desk experience.

I was half way through when I received my summons and at that point I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t much of a narrative arch and each chapter was just a miniature tableau of one of the many naughty going-ons at the House of Holes. Maybe it comes together at the end? One of the reasons I had kept the book so long was because I was reading one chapter at a time. [Ed.note: He was doing that with about five other books simultaneously.]

As it stands House of Holes was a fun book of irreverent surreal pornography. If I was looking for something “light” to read I would rather read this than Alexander McCall Smith.

I couldn’t help thinking about though the way an white-bearded Caucasian erotica writer from New England is treated differently than say Zane. Food for thought. Fuel for sex.

[hayduke_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After reading nearly a hundred pages (not even halfway) of House of Holes, the word "monotonous" started to hover over the text like a cloud. There is a lot of fun to be had between the pages of Nicholson Baker's latest novel, and part of that fun is watching Baker let his imagination run wild — through a field of sex organs. Ultimately though, there is no character detail, or plot to follow. Just chapter after chapter of wild (predominately hetero-) sexual fantasies from the mind of one of America's premier literati.

House of Holes is a pleasant diversion, albeit a hellaciously sexual one. I would label it more bawdy and bizarre than erotic, and I certainly found myself chuckling along the way towards the only climax possible in a book of this type. As a novel though I think it works better as short stories: Since there is no genuine continuity — except a few names and the title location — I think it might work better if the reader picked it up periodically rather than wading through orgasm after orgasm for 262 pages straight. Then again...

[jenn_stringer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love sexy, dirty, raunchy books. This one delivers on the dirty raunchy part and because of that it definitely won't be for everyone. Nicholson Baker is known for his dirty literary works and the NYT seems to love most of what he writes. This is my first experience and he *is* a fantastic writer. His use of language is clever (he makes up words like "thrummiest" and "mufling") and he can draw a character with just a few lines and he is very funny. He creates a world full of weird characters and imaginary places that allows the reader to have a crazy good time.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A book of raunch, indeed. This one is definitely over the top. I think Baker invented a new genre here, combining farce with sex fantasy with science fiction. Playful. Comic. Erotic. Sometimes just stupid. I should have counted the number of unique descriptions he comes up with for the male and female genitalia as well as the act itself. Obviously not one for mom and pop, and better if read in small doses at a time. Just this quote which is completely unrepresentative, uh, I will avoid excerpting the parts I liked the most. Hey, just admitting I purchased and read this book is enough!On old age:“Because she knew that his kind of easy glancing manner was not all that common. Men turned thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and it was like someone dimmed the lights. When they’re young, they’re hilarious and bubbly and boyish. And bad. So bad. When they’re old, they’re flat and stupid and dull. She watched them in airports with their wives: brain-dead, mostly. And yet this man, Chuck, was probably forty-five at least. He still had some humor left in him.”

[bookstopshere · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

While I didn't particularly enjoy Vox or The Fermata, I tried this based on the NYT Review of Bks review - my bad! This might be the most boring and least "erotic" book of pseudo-pornography ever written. Baker isn't always so dull; I enjoyed The Anthologist, but this is nearly unreadable

[meggo_2 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is one book where I was led astray by the New York Times review of books, which raved about this work. I must have forgotten how lacklustre I found Baker's other book in my collection, Vox, which was supposed to be daring and pushing the boundaries, and instead, I found to be trying to hard. The same situation applies here - Baker writes what is, essentially, 262 pages of poorly written soft porn. If it is meant to be salacious, it is far too heavy handed. If it is meant to be titillating, it is too heavy handed. Generally an unpleasant read, unless one is a prepubescent boy, who will think it is The Best Book Ever Written, because it talks about boobies.

[epictale · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Prompted by reading a profile about the author in an August 2011 New York Times, I requested "House of Holes" from my local public library and, lo and behold, the hold notice landed in my email queue within a few weeks. Having finished the book in an unusually short time, several words come to my mind to describe it: delicious, shallow, funny, silly, time waster, raunchy, fantastic, literary, trashy, sexy, clever, goofy, and anti-erotic. There's no point in describing a plot or thesis, for the book contains neither. Nor is there any character development. But if you want to read a series of original sex-drenched vignettes (to either yourself or a loved one) while steering clear of Penthouse, here's your book.