*Slithers out of my coffin to offer you this one week late and not as detailed as I'd hoped because I'm still sick. Ugh.*
There's lots of little gems in this chapter - which I believe is the longest one yet - but the two scenes that stand out as most important in my mind are the first one, the flashback where Ava recalls hiding in the chapel; and her scene with Mercy at the end.
The prose in the chapel scene is intentionally lush, ripe with details, as a means of carrying forward the mythical tone of the overall narrative. There are places, terribly ordinary places, that we visit as children, and in our minds, they become as spectacular and fascinating as Versailles. The chapel was one such place for Ava as a child, and that's precisely why I chose to write it for the first time from her 8-year-old POV. The level of detail here shows the reader that she isn't a dispassionate observer; likewise, it again highlights how much the club, and her past, means to her still. This place is knitted into her bones, and she'll never shake it off.
This scene is also the first time she meets Mercy. Absolutely nothing untoward happens, but I still was very aware that showing their age difference in this way would raise some reader hair. At every turn with this book, I strove to "go there." The life these characters lead isn't legal or comfortable, so I never tried to draw those hard lines along their personal lives.
This chapter as a whole shows Ava's (erroneous) assumptions about never having truly belonged with the club. Her seeing herself as "only" a daughter, rather than an old lady, isn't a statement from me about social hierarchy or worthiness, but a personal fear of Ava's, before, by the end of the book, she comes fully into her own. Likewise, Mercy seems like an ass in this chapter, because neither Ava nor the readers have yet been privy to his heartache and real feelings.
Recall the Nietzche quote from chapter one: it's all about perspective, and so far, ours, and Ava's, is limited.
