🔗 Share this article

This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma 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 expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par