🔗 Share this article

The new book is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par