Chapter 1

The Content:

Since 6:30 Jess, a teenager girl, is out there in a pool for swimming. Nearly every morning she goes out with her grandpa in order to swim. It's her passion and she won a lot of medals. After 20 minutes grandpa wants to call her out. But Jess doesn't understand why and so she continues her lanes. She only minds when it is too late. Her grandpa gets a heart attack and crashes into the pool. He is taken to a hospital. Nevertheless after three days the stubborn character of grandpa takes him out of the hospital back home because one day later, the 20th August, the family wants to go to summer holidays. They'll drive to the place where grandpa was grown up, so there is no way to force him to stay at home at least.
Everyone of the family, dad, the only son of grandpa, Jess and mum are worried about this kind of insistence.
However, this is not the only aspect to think about. Grandpa begins to draw a new picture. It's called "River Boy" and it seems to be very mysterious because of two certain facts. Grandpa has never named one of his pictures before and the picture has no boy in it. There is no living creature on it. Nothing that indicates a boy. Only a big river, the sky and banks are on it. However, Grandpa decides to work on it during their holidays. So Jess will put it in the car.

My thoughts while reading:

The first chapter shows that those things I expected aren't definitely wrong. The story seems to be very mysterious. While reading I had a lot of thoughts dealing with this stubborn behaviour of the grandpa. I ask myself whether there's an answer for that unusual attitude and I think I'll found the answer in the mysterious picture called "River Boy". It needs to be important for the story. There's no other way because the novel itself is even called the same.
I also thought about the role of Jess. What role does she play in this novel? I think to be a muse for a picture, that seems to be an important role and also her detailed description in the first chapter militates in favour for that.
In my mind the holidays will play a certain role in the story because the author raises most of intention to that event.