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Steve's Flee Page

Aurora



last updated: 06OCT22
This page is devoted to Evan Dara's third novel Flee. I just finished reading it and below have added a list of interesting words, phrases, proper nouns, as well as several questions. (A scene spotter section is in progress and pending.)

The book is well under half the length of either The Lost Scrapbook or The Easy Chain, and like those two is dialogue-heavy, so it shouldn't take you too long to read...unless you're like me and you can't resist googling everything in sight. (And playing with seemingly inconsequential stuff like the numbers that pose as chapter titles. Or trying to discern any difference at all between Flee's town of Anderburg, and Burlington, VT. Or Flee's Pitkinson University and the University of Vermont. And I have to say, I do like it when writers use identifiable locations, so if you spend any time at all on this page you will find links to many locations and establishments mentioned in Flee. I am an inveterate map junkie, and if I can plot a story's locations—or track a chracter's travels—on a map I'm a happy guy.)

Discussion questions (i. e. things I couldn't figure out) are at the very bottom, but they're lousy with spoilers so scroll down at your own risk.


Here's a Table of Contents-ish graphic you might find helpful:


And here's a list of some words and phrases you might want to look up. As time goes on I'll think of other things to add. Email me with suggestions.:


And I have to say something about the voice of what I've come to call the Poetic character. This character's paragraph at the top page 80 has me in complete thrall. I'm not 100% sure what it means (and trust me, I usually eyeroll hugely when what I read is unclear) but this so works for me. In the book it's a straight-up narrative paragraph, but excerpting it here in a lyrical form makes me feel good, so I'm doing it, with all apologies to Mr Dara:

I must run so as not to be run from.
I must leave before the will for leaving leaves me.
I go to keep my kaleidoscope alive,
Filled with drenched and fragrant panes,
And not faded into compensations,
And not distanced in frames.
I—-

(Almost as heavy for me as the "het smalle/death's door" line at the bottom of p38 in The Easy Chain.)

QUESTIONS TOSSED TO THE ĘTHER FOR ANSWERAGE BY SHE OR HE WHO HATH KNOWING. OR HATH A PRETTY GOOD IDEA. OR SIMPLY POSSESSETH, YOU KNOW, A NOTION:
  1. Is Ezra Marcus's autistic father? (I began leaning away from this hypothesis almost as soon as I wrote it, since in the first chapter we learn that Ezra owned a hardware store. Although I know next to nothing about autism; Is it conceivable that an autistic person could run a business for as long as Ezra ran his?) I haven't learned gobs about autism, but since I wrote this in 2013 I've learned enough to know that it's quite possible that an autistic person could run a businesss for a long time.
  2. Did Marcus really father an autistic daughter, as Carol seems to think? (If so, why would a daughter give her father a popup book?)
  3. Is Marcus himself autistic? He gets groceries delivered despite going on long walks and not living far from the store; his interactions with others seem problematic at best (the End-of-Dayers, p131; the guy on p214 who read his posters; the seemingly cool "jazz battle" with Mr Baker that gets awkward, etc.); Though clearly aware that the anti-flyer brigade has yanked almost all his help wanted flyers within hours, the fact seems not to bother him in the least.
  4. The fixer-upper that's being raved about on p235 can't NOT be Marcus's place...which means Marcus put his ass to the wind, perhaps establishing (or dreaming about establishing) a west coast branch of the Gratitude Center.
  5. Is the Sam who visits Ezra on p134 somehow the same Sam who, at age ten is—

06AUG13
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