As good a place to begin as any, with a word that I probably wouldn't know if Mark Z. Danielewski hadn't made such good use of it. Anfractuosity: the quality of being like a channel, crevice or passage full of windings and turnings. Sinuous and complex, maze-like, labyrinthine. From House of Leaves:
In order to escape [labyrinths] then, we have to remember we cannot ponder all paths but must decode only those necessary to get out. . . . Unfortunately, the anfractuosity of some labyrinths may actually prohibit a permanent solution. More confounding still, its complexity may exceed the imagination of even the designer. Therefore anyone lost within must recognize that no one, not even a god or an Other, comprehends the entire maze and so therefore can never offer a definitive answer. . . . All solutions then are necessarily personal. (115)
Life as a maze. Anfractuous. With monsters and rumors of monsters.
By the way, House of Leaves is a hell of a book and then some, but I don't recommend reading it. Friends don't give friends House of Leaves. It is a book that whispers to you. It gives you a fever. It get heavier as you hold it. It makes you look in closets. It makes you swear you'll never look in a closet again, that you'll hammer them all shut and mount crucifixes on the crossboards. It makes you question your sanity. It makes your sanity question you. It bludgeons you. It strokes you. And it changes you, so much so and in such mazey untraceable ways, that in the end you begin to wonder if you're one of the monsters in the middle of it.
So no, I wouldn't pick it up if I were you.
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