When Does "SUMMER OF HATE" (2012) Take Place?
"SUMMER OF HATE" is a political romance historical fiction novel written by Chris Kraus that released August 3rd, 2012. So when is "SUMMER OF HATE" set?
It takes place in the years:
We know this because the third-person narrator very early on tells us Catt Dunlop's "long, tangled brown hair is pulled off her face with a sweatband she found in the gym bag she forgot to unload from the back of her new Subaru Outback." in the first chapter. The Subaru Outback debuted at the 1994 New York Auto Show in the real world. So it is most likely after 1994 AD.
2005 AD - 2006 AD
We know this because the third-person narrator very early on tells us Catt Dunlop's "long, tangled brown hair is pulled off her face with a sweatband she found in the gym bag she forgot to unload from the back of her new Subaru Outback." in the first chapter. The Subaru Outback debuted at the 1994 New York Auto Show in the real world. So it is most likely after 1994 AD.
Furthermore, chapter seven ends just after the sentence "Classes start in two days." and in chapter 8, Catt writes a letter for Paul Garcia in which she says, "In Fall 2005 I entered UNM as a psychology major"... so it's autumn of 2005 AD in the middle of the narrative.
More specifically, in the first chapter the narrator says, "It's a Tuesday morning in March, 2005". So it's almost certainly March of 2005 AD at the beginning.
In the third chapter we're told, "In April 2005, four months into Bush's return to office, Michael Jackson stood trial in Santa Barbara for child sex and Saw 2 had just hit the multiplexes." So presumably it is now April of 2005 AD.
Then, the first line of chapter six is: "DURING MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND, Catt buys a twenty-five dollar bike at a yard sale." The Memorial Day holiday is always the last Monday in May so it is currently May of 2005 AD.
During chapter ten the narrator lets us in on Catt's thoughts. 'Driving back to West Phoenix through meshes of freeways, she remembers a story she saw in the local paper that morning: a Spanish newspaper reporter forced to apologize to gubernatorial candidate Don Goldwater for using the words "concentration camp" to describe the tent city he promised to build at the border to contain the "illegals" who'd be put to work building a wall.' and reporter Maria Leon's agency EFE News issued a written apology to Don Goldwater in the real world on June 28th, 2006 AD so it's now June of 2006 AD.
The twelfth and final chapter functions as an epilogue. The narrator tells us, "For the rest of July"..., ..."finishes his classes in early August"..., "In November, Catt books a stopover in Albuquerque"..., and later, ..."at eleven on this Wednesday night in mid-April". So we've finally moved into April of 2007 AD by the end.
Additionally, there is an extended flashback in chapter eleven. It begins with a police report that opens, "On 01-26-95 at approximately 2104 hours I responded to"... and then continues to the following months of Paul's life. It ends not long after the phrase "By now it was fall. Nights were cold." So this section starts in January of 1995 AD and ends in autumn of 1995 AD.
