Content Warning: This section contains references to murder and death.

“These are the facts. They reveal only that the greatest mysteries lie hidden in what we believe we already know.”

The comparison between facts and mystery highlights the limited nature of facts and therefore the complexity of truth. The book opens with a statement about belief, facts, and mystery, introducing The Complex Nature of Belief, a theme that frames the rest of the novel.

“My wife longed for escape: from the East Coast, shattered romances, a painful teenage history. All the topographies of her life.”

The diction in this passage connects the concepts of maps and land to life events via the use of “topographies.” This connection between human experience and the earth is echoed in the unity that Jonah and Isaac feel at the end of the novel.

“It was just a feeling. A sense of something alive and lurking in the darkness overhead.”

The narrators describe the upstairs of Isaac’s house as haunted several times in the novel. It’s metaphorically haunted by the ghost of how Daniel was seen, or not seen, by the other characters. The “feeling” that Isaac experiences regarding the upstairs represents his failure to see Daniel’s faults.