🔗 Share this article

This latest work centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

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. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par