Wow! There is nothing like coming to the party late when everyone else has already sampled the food and told their best stories. I wanted to wait until I had finished the novel to read the questions--so here I am. (Better late than never?)
Having read all the wonderful answers and stories from Muse, Patti, April, and Laura, (and Deb and Erica, too!) I'm not sure I have much to add. I will say that as I was reading, I took what Kate said about challenging Ava to do the walk at face value--I felt Kate's most conscious motive was simply to get Ava home again, to share some time with with her. Later, during Kate's chapter, when Kate speaks of having been the river, having learned deep secrets from all her friends, I realized how much time she had had to think about the fears and problems her friends faced before she set up the challenges. At that point, I felt, perhaps, Kate had also thought about Ava's fears and set up this specific challenge. I, however, found myself returning to my first thought: Kate simply wanted to spend time with Ava, have her home, and the motives about facing the big C--was secondary. Then I also thought about how Ava had kept well-meaning friends out of her mother's room, fearing that they would burden her mother with their own fears and problems. I wondered if Ava would have, perhaps, become overly protective of Kate also, if she had been around more, if Kate would have wanted that. I also wondered if another reason Ava did not come more often during Kate's illness is that she was afraid that she, too, would let her guard down and tell more than she wanted Kate to know.
I, too, can relate to the smell of life idea--White Shoulders perfume/powder is my mom, dressed for church--purse, shoes, and gloves all matching--my mom prior to the strokes and 16 years in the nursing home.
Two aspects of the book I really enjoyed: I was pulled into the interweaving of the characters' lives and stories, all the rich details and subtlties of the layering. And I loved the fact that most of the character stories necessitated a great deal of flashback, but Kate's final chapter (and, of course, it had some flashback) was mostly present tense and looking forward (complete with all the rebirth/baptism imagery).
