🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates 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 fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par