2.5 stars. This novel features a difficult narrator to be inside the head of, and difficult subject matter to read, but neither of those two things put me off. And I quite liked the gothic, old-fashioned feel of the narration, even though the setting is fairly contemporary. There were two problems for me - the first was that we know what will happen during the whole of the second half from the outset. This isn't really a spoiler because it is in the first few pages, but just in case...

Spoiler

the narrator tells us he performs a laryngectomy on the twins, then he kills and buries them, and goes back inside to Karen. So none of this comes as a surprise or a shock in the second half and I was just waiting around for these things to happen.

. The second issue was the coincidences. Yes, they happen in real life, but in books they are often difficult to believe. For example, near the end, the narrator says he rarely gets a local paper, then one day he decides to, and what do you know,

Spoiler

the death of Karen's son is front page news that week.

. Another example: the narrator meets Karen, a woman with a mute son, and a few pages on, he meets a mute vagrant woman. I understand that is what the book is about - language, communication etc - but really, how many mute people are there out there for odd-balls interested in studying mute people to come across.
Perhaps I'm being unduly mean. Luke was an interesting, creepy man; the writing and especially descriptions of landscape were often very beautiful. Just not for me overall.