This book was so tough for me to rate and I needed to let it it marinate for a bit before I wrote the review. I was very intrigued in the beginning of the book with the introduction of the mysterious creepy "we", and I liked the slow moving exploration of Mieczysław's personality and backstory and growing relationship with Thilo. But I also spent a lot of this book frustrated, thinking "is this horror? what are you trying to tell me with all of the misogynistic rhetoric? where is this going?!" I even said out loud to my partner "I am not going to rate this book very highly because you can't just string me along for 80% of the book and have a banger ending and expect that to be enough." .... And then, almost literally, I turned the page, and sat in silence turning pages as quickly as I could, because indeed, Olga Tokarczuk has done it again, the banger ending WAS enough. All of the slowly and methodically placed pieces slid into place and the story she was telling came into focus and the payoff was incredible. It made me want to immediately re-read it with all of the context and insight that I now had. Olga Tokarczuk continues to be one of my favorite authors (trying to make this a three-Olga year and finally read the copy of Flights that has optimistically been sitting on my end table for six months) and I am thrilled that this got translated into English so quickly so I could devour it in the middle of spooky season.