🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par