This book is pretty intense with the language. It makes me want to read classics and improve my vocabulary so it’s not a bad thing. It drags a little in the beginning but there’s hints and pieces of drama that I’m excited about.

Chapter 4 "With a rush of what was almost motion sickness, I experienced for a moment both the claustrophobic feeling that the walls had rushed in towards us and the vertiginous one that they receded infinitely, leaving both of us suspended in some boundless expanse of dark." The tension builds steadily in this chapter. It opens with a sense of uncertainty, as we're left in the dark about the whereabouts of Henry, Francis, and the twins, unsure of what they might be doing, and the chapter ends with the revelation of a disturbing truth, leaving me filled with anticipation for the difficult conversation that lies ahead.

Chapter 3 "If I threw myself off, I thought, who would find me in all that white silence? Might the river beat me downstream over the rocks until it spat me out in the quiet waters, down behind the dye factory, where some lady would catch me in the beam of her headlights when she pulled out of the parking lot at five in the afternoon? Or would I, like the pieces of Leo's mandolin, lodge stubbornly in some quiet place behind a boulder and wait, my clothes washing about me, for spring?" I read this chapter while sitting by a window in a local café, watching the rain outside. It wasn’t too cold and my coffee was warm, yet I still felt like I was freezing to death alongside Richard in that room. And just when the tension couldn’t get any heavier, Henry’s sudden appearance made everything even more intriguing.