🔗 Share this article

The new book features characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par