In The Four Spent the Day Together, author and critic Chris Kraus (I Love Dick) blends autofiction, true crime, and social criticism in a multilayered, provocative, and thoughtful portrait of art, aspiration, and addiction in a splintered and devolving United States.
This genre-bending novel comprises three linked but discrete parts that correspond to specific periods in Kraus's life. The first, "Milford," recounts her early childhood in blue-collar Milford, Conn., where a young Catt Greene, possessed of a keen artistic and critical mind, is perpetually at odds with her parents and developmentally disabled sister and drifts into a troubled adolescence. The second part, "Balsam," picks up Catt's life decades later, when she has become a successful writer, in Los Angeles and in Balsam in northern Minnesota. After her cult classic work of autofiction, I Love Dick, is made into a TV series, Catt struggles with an Internet culture that seems bent on canceling her and becomes estranged from her husband, Paul, who is sliding back into addiction after a period of sobriety. The last part, "Harding," dissects a crime with which Catt becomes obsessed, the drug-fueled 2019 murder of a man by three teenagers in an Iron Range town after they all spent the day together.
Kraus's gift is her ability to blend these three disparate narratives into a seamless whole in which readers feel they are experiencing the events with her in real time. Through her impressive control of and attention to detail, Kraus offers a panoramic view of a societal landscape that has become harsher over time, especially for the most vulnerable. --Debra Ginsberg, author and freelance editor