Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In

A quirky volume, engrossing in its design and subject matter both. The illustrations are rendered by the single red "thread" (remember Theseus?) that begins on the front pastedown (i.e., the inside cover) and wanders across each page to the end pastedown. The typography cues you to turn the book as you progress, in imitation of the 11 turns in a classic labyrinth.The only truly annoying factor is the author continually cuts between topics with no transitions, which makes for choppy reading. Recommended, nonetheless.

I loved this book. It cast the subject in a new light. So many times unique structures can be a gimmick or distract from the content; however, this book used a non-traditional structure to enhance the discussion. Readers have to physical maneuver the book, which effectively mimics how our brains make connections.

It's a long essay on the history of mazes and labyrinths done in a thoroughly a -maze-ing way... I quite enjoyed my wander thru it...

I bought two copies after hearing a review of this book on NPR. Both of my grandsons enjoyed it.

Fun and interesting book

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

The hardcover was damaged and worn out, inside the book is fine but the hardcover was in bad shape. Would not recommend.

This was bought as a gift.

“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.