This latest work centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.
From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work
Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.
As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.
Preoccupation and Open Ends
Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par
