The Side Quest Book Club discussion

Spoiler-tastic

As I reread this, chapter 26 has me in tears. You can dismiss Travis's actions as being a dumb kid, but then you can see how the time jump has really messed with him.

When Travis sees his bedroom for the first time after reawakening, he describes it as "a gray IKEA nightmare". Something is fishy. Ground breaking for the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts happened in 2006, construction took almost five years to be completed in 2011, meaning it was being built essentially the entire time Travis was in Denver, but the KC metro area didn't even get an IKEA until 2014. IKEA didn't even announce the planned store until 2012.

Also, he refers to seeing cancer specialists in the "tri-state area", which defies logic. The KC metro area spreads over two states, not three, and even if you expand to neighboring states, the city is located near an approximate "four corners" region including Nebraska and Iowa. Given where his final surgery takes place, does he mean the lateral strip of Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri? Anyone who's driven across western Kansas would hardly refer to the region as a "tri-state area". It's like calling New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio a tri-state area.

Eric wrote: "I thought some of the timing stuff with tech was questionable, like cell phones and digital billboards, but thought it was just some unspecified vague timeframe for the story."

It probably wouldn't be noticeable except to people from Kansas who got really excited/jealous when the IKEA opened there. I look forward to more nitpicking when he visits Lawrence from Cleveland.

Things I have shouted while reading this book:
"Why isn't this kid in therapy?!??!?"
"Fuck you, you stalker!"
"Cut him off Kate. Cut. Him. Off."
"Teenagers are insane."
"FUCK YOU."