🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on characters pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par