🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par