Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In Hardcover – 5 April 2018

This was bought as a gift.

This is right up my street - maps, mazes and mythology - and it absolutely delivered

This is an exceptionally beautiful, compelling object with wonderful writing added to the mix

“A walker leaving a labyrinth is not the same person who entered it.”I had not heard of Henry Eliot before. I gather that his previous book, Curiocity, was a highly unusual guide to London, which attracted rave reviews from such as Philip Pullman. Not that London is a mundane subject, (pace Dr Johnson), but for his second outing Eliot attacks a topic which is by nature and design strange and confusing.He starts by explaining the difference between a maze and a labyrinth; most of his subjects are mazes, though he does include some labyrinths, including the Minotaur’s (this, he tells us, was a maze – you can see this isn’t going to be simple); the story of Theseus, the Minotaur and associated characters is told in episodes throughout the book.Wherever possible, the text is illustrated by a diagram of the relevant maze (or labyrinth). “Follow this thread” is an entirely literal instruction on how to read the book. I’ll leave you to find out why this is, how reading the book is physically disorienting, and why it would have been a nightmare for pre-digital typesetting … The illustrations are just as important as the text; as Eliot says in the Acknowledgements, his confederate “Quibe” “manages to capture the essence of an image with minimum ink”, or as the blurb says “most of his artworks are made with just one line”.The book covers all sorts of mazes: “real, fictional, mythical and metaphorical”. It also gives brief assessments of some modern maze makers, who not surprisingly are best described as eccentric.If the book has a weakness, it was that it left me wanting more on mazes, and perhaps less on the Theseus story, much of which of course (such as Theseus’ abandonment of Ariadne on Naxos) is straying away from the maze theme. However, in general it is an absorbing and thought-provoking presentation of mazes real and otherwise and what they have meant to those who encounter them. It is no accident that mazes feature in many horror stories; Eliot mentions The Shining, but there are many others, including for example one of M R James’ classics, in which the temple in the middle of a maze bears the inscription “penetrans ad interiora mortis (penetrating into the interior places of Death) … if you like this sort of theme, you will love this book.

This book is a book as maze and a book about mazes. It's very quirky and therefore a great toilet book. I listened to an excellent article on Radio 4 recently about mazes and labyrinths and this book is an equally fascinating insight into an off-beat specialist topic.

If Eliot had written a masterpiece on mazes, the typesetting (essentially you follow a line through the book to read it in different orientations) would bring it to another level.As it is, what Eliot is offering us to read is disappointing. He doesn't have the depth of insight or research to make mazes truly fascinating, and there is a lot of padding, especially about Theseus. Thus the typesetting begins to be revealed as the gimmick it is. Perhaps an interesting book to dip into on a coffee table or in the loo, but that's all.

Who knew there was so much to write about the maze. This book is fascinating, the quirky way it is written with the single red line leading from page to page . I love it , I dip into very often , in fact I have it in the toilet as it is perfect to read in theit.

An interesting book to dip in to (have to admit to reading about half so far). Love the design (slightly confusing as is the point) and the quality.One for the coffee table when you want a break.