🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par