Kraus's third person provides enough distance between the author and the protagonist to allow the reader to forget (if he already knew) that she, too, was born in the Bronx, moved to Connecticut as a child, and attended high school in Wellington. But as soon as the second part of the novel begins, we again find ourselves in the auto-fictional universe of Chris Kraus. It's 2012, and Katt dreams of having a summer home in Balsam, Minnesota, “an old-fashioned, one-and-a-half story cottage, perfectly situated” where she could work on her unfinished novel. She already rents a lake house in the area with her partner, Paul Garcia, who earned a master's degree in addiction studies nearby.
This section travels back and forth from Minnesota to Los Angeles, Katt and Paul's primary residence in Albuquerque, where they own property. Katt struggles to understand her place in society. Her old work is being rediscovered by the Tumblr generation. Internet enthusiasm, which she uses, but which she fundamentally does not trust. Her success seems insignificant to her as the world she lives in is both being spruced up and emptied: “the dive bars and hole-in-the-wall galleries where they used to present their work to a handful of friends have been replaced by luxurious, quietly capitalized spaces. There have been conferences, workshops, presentations and openings, all well received, but then quickly forgotten by a wider, wealthier audience.”
Los Angeles is becoming too expensive, but she doesn't want to leave the house she loves, which the narrator describes as “hidden behind wrought-iron gates… one of the crown jewels of the gentrified, crime-ridden, gang-ridden neighborhood that Katt loved and Paul hated.” Katt finds romance in life in a predominantly Central American neighborhood; it reminds her of her childhood in the Bronx. Paul, however, sees cracks through which he could escape. When he met Katt, he had two years of sobriety, and “before that his life was a mixture of alcoholic disasters.” The path forward seems to be in real estate: “It recently occurred to them both that the solution might be to buy a house two thousand miles outside of Los Angeles in Northwoods.” The implied question is: how can anyone but the rich afford to live in this world?
