Remember the movie Galaxy Quest? Sam Rockwell's character was named "Guy," and the running joke was that he was the character who got killed off early and never had a real name. Well, in the Dartmoor universe, Andre is Guy.
*Recalls an early review in which the reader wondered "why am I supposed to care about this Andre guy?" You're not. He's a catalyst. A simple tool for launching the club into action. Sometimes we writers like to use those to our advantage.
Plot-wise, Chapter Seven kicks off the Club Drama of it all when a member of the rival Carpathians MC sneaks onto the property and knifes a hapless Andre during Ghost's inaugural party. Without an exterior threat, Mercy and Ava would doubtless eventually have found their way back together, but it would have been a slower and more frustrating dance. We have a split-second here, when Aidan's hustling Ava away from the scene, when she catches Mercy's eye and still thinks it's "rage" she's seeing him direct her way. Poor thing has no idea.
The emotional meat and potatoes of the chapter takes place before Andre's demise. Fresh from her encounter with Mercy, Ava and Ronnie take a walk across the grounds, and while he's trying to reassure her that it's normal to feel as if she doesn't belong back home after her experiences at college, she's instead thinking the exact opposite.
This exchange is one of those "heart of the issue" moments that show us who Ava is deep down:
Ronnie said, “It’s not as great as you thought it’d be, is it?”
Her stomach clenched in a painful way. She folded her arms across her middle. “What isn’t?”
“Being back here.” His tone was gentle, knowing. Like he felt sorry for her.
She chewed at the inside of her cheek, hating the sudden tears that burned her eyes.
“That’s normal,” he continued. “It’s true what they say, you know. That you can’t go home. You’re not the same person you were when you lived here, Ava. It’s normal to be underwhelmed with what you left behind.”
Red misted her vision. Before she could catch herself, remind herself that she was a soon-to-be grad student and not a biker chick anymore, she said, “That’s the dumbest phrase in the English language. ‘You can’t go home.’ ”
Ronnie said. “Um, what it means–”
“I know what it means!” she snapped. “It means every educated person is supposed to put their hands on a Pat Conroy novel and sob about how awful their childhood was and how much their parents warped them, and how far beyond that they’ve grown. Right?” She turned blazing eyes to him. She might have snarled. “Well I am not warped, Ronnie. I’m not basking in Prince of Tides hometown shame right now. You got that?”
It's also me airing my grievances with the late, great Pat Conroy, who was a Southern literary giant and very talented wordsmith...who also had some glaringly ugly ideas about women, and family origins, and who seemed, in every book, wholly unable to let go of his own self-importance. It's entirely possible to have a professional admiration for someone and find their worldview troubling, and such is the case here.
Several years ago, I had a reader email me to make sure I knew Conroy didn't coin the phrase "you can't go home." Yes, I assured, I do know that. I reference The Prince of Tides intentionally because it's the sort of novel I think casual readers would assume Fearless is going to be, but which it definitely isn't. (I recommend the hell out of that book, by the way, it's one of the most interesting and disturbing I've ever read.) I feel Conroy was prone to sweeping generalizations - I think all authors are, to some degree. And Ava's outburst here is a signal to readers that she's going to generalize in a very un-Conroy direction going forward. His protagonists always tried to straddle two worlds, envying and hating their societal betters in equal measure, until they eventually joined the ranks of those betters.
Not our girl. Not in this story. She's perfectly happy to lie down with those dogs and catch fleas.
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