This latest work centers on characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.
From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book
The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.
Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.
From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.
As a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."
Letdown and Fragmentation
I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".
The Homicide Account
Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.
Fascination and Incompletion
Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par
