Twenty Years Later

Content Warning: This section of the guide describes and discusses the source text’s treatment of terrorism and mass murder, infertility, death by suicide, alcohol addiction, and sexual acts and bondage play.

“The weight of the situation drooped her shoulders and brought tears to her eyes. Things were not meant to play out like this. Just a short couple of months ago, she and Cameron were happy. They were planning a future together. But then everything changed. The pregnancy and the abortion and everything that followed. The jealousy and the hate. It had all come so quickly that Victoria barely had time to digest it. And now she was in the middle of a nightmare with no way out.”

The ambiguity in this passage centers on phrasing like, “Things were not meant to play out like this,” which neither confirms nor denies Victoria’s involvement in Cameron’s death. However, the inclusion of a chapter in the Frontmatter that presents Victoria’s point of view is meant to develop sympathy and understanding for Victoria’s character, implying that Victoria is likely guilty of something but perhaps is not the most justified target for investigation or condemnation.

“Panic, though, was good. It meant she was aware of what was happening and had not suffered ‘behavioral inaction,’ a symptom described by the survival experts who had consulted on the episode. Also called ‘dislocation of expectation,’ it was the mind’s response to a traumatic situation. The brain attempts to correlate the current situation with a known experience from the past.”

When a text devotes a passage to what is not happening, it is usually an indication that this concept will be important later on. Here, the idea of “behavioral inaction” is not what Avery experiences, yet it is detailed at length, which suggests that a character later in the narrative will probably experience behavioral inaction at a critical moment. The correlation to traumatic events, too, might imply the opposite: that Avery will continue to find connections to her past that spur her forward.

“Because if there was one thing that spurred the public’s interest even more than watching the birth of a young starlet rising to fame, it was watching them fall from grace. Schadenfreude had become the new American pastime.”

“Schadenfreude” is a German word for the pleasure one takes in another’s suffering, such as laughing at a person falling. In this case, schadenfreude is used as a foreshadowing device, placing Avery and her career on a delicate edge between fame and downfall.