Same as a lot of others here - looked up a lot of words, tried my best to understand when things got opaque, but kept it moving forward for what turned out to be one of the great payoffs in modern literature….strongly recommend powering through if you can.

An absolute masterpiece.

I’ve have read it twice, brutal and amazing. My wife claims to have ptsd from it.

At your own risk…

Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter series - FBI investigative and procedural bits are fantastic (if perhaps a little dated by now).