‘Chris Kraus reinvents the true-crime novel.’ —The New Yorker
‘The intelligence and honesty and total originality of Chris Kraus make her work not just great but indispensable…I read everything Chris Kraus writes; she softens despair with her brightness, and with incredible humor, too.’ —Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake
An unforgettable new novel from the ‘powerfully original’ (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) author of the cult classic I Love Dick—a stark, witty journey into a fractured, violent America, culminating in the investigation of a teenage murder on Minnesota’s Iron Range.
On the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, at the end of the last decade, three teenagers shot and killed an older acquaintance after spending the day with him. In a cold, depressed town, on the fringes of the so-called ‘meth community,’ the three young people were quickly arrested and imprisoned.
At the time of the murder, Catt Greene and her husband, Paul Garcia, are living nearby in a house they’d bought years earlier as a summer escape from Los Angeles. Locked into a period of personal turmoil, moving between LA and Minnesota—between the art world and the urban poverty of Paul’s addiction therapist jobs, the rural poverty of the icy, depressed Iron Range—Catt turns away from her own life and towards the murder case, which soon becomes an obsession. In her attempt to pierce through the brutality and despair surrounding the murder and to understand the teenagers’ lives, Catt is led back to the idiosyncratic, aspirational lives of her parents in the working-class Bronx and small-town, blue-collar Milford, Connecticut.
Written in three linked parts, The Four Spent the Day Together explores the tensions of unclaimed futures and unchosen circumstances in the age of social media, paralyzing interconnectedness, and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor.
Genre: Literary Fiction
‘The intelligence and honesty and total originality of Chris Kraus make her work not just great but indispensable…I read everything Chris Kraus writes; she softens despair with her brightness, and with incredible humor, too.’ —Rachel Kushner, author of Creation Lake
An unforgettable new novel from the ‘powerfully original’ (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) author of the cult classic I Love Dick—a stark, witty journey into a fractured, violent America, culminating in the investigation of a teenage murder on Minnesota’s Iron Range.
On the Iron Range of northern Minnesota, at the end of the last decade, three teenagers shot and killed an older acquaintance after spending the day with him. In a cold, depressed town, on the fringes of the so-called ‘meth community,’ the three young people were quickly arrested and imprisoned.
At the time of the murder, Catt Greene and her husband, Paul Garcia, are living nearby in a house they’d bought years earlier as a summer escape from Los Angeles. Locked into a period of personal turmoil, moving between LA and Minnesota—between the art world and the urban poverty of Paul’s addiction therapist jobs, the rural poverty of the icy, depressed Iron Range—Catt turns away from her own life and towards the murder case, which soon becomes an obsession. In her attempt to pierce through the brutality and despair surrounding the murder and to understand the teenagers’ lives, Catt is led back to the idiosyncratic, aspirational lives of her parents in the working-class Bronx and small-town, blue-collar Milford, Connecticut.
Written in three linked parts, The Four Spent the Day Together explores the tensions of unclaimed futures and unchosen circumstances in the age of social media, paralyzing interconnectedness, and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and poor.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Unflinchingly honest, The Four Spent the Day Together is a spry exploration of self and society. From the book's beginnings in Milford, Connecticut, to its looming conclusion in Harding, Minnesota, Kraus evokes an America which is both expansive and exacting. Kraus is not only a master of auto-fiction, but a thorough and thoughtful reporter." - Catherine Airey
"What a truly unique, brilliant, surprising and bold book this is... Kraus matches the elegance of Capote's In Cold Blood and his refusal of narrative or moral simplicity. She similarly paints a rich, honest picture of social class in America, and the ways in which class and circumstance constrain a life... Each story feels frank, humane and revelatory. Each life is detailed with so much compassion. I really loved the honesty of this book. I couldn't stop reading it and I will recommend it to everyone." - Rachel Connolly
"The Four Spent the Day Together is the great American novel we need right now to understand what has happened to America. To understand how we got here. This is the book for our time, just as perhaps American Psycho was the book of the 80s and 90s. It shows how it happened, how everything is linked, how the American dream slowly drifted into the American nightmare - at its core, within the American middle class. This is Chris Kraus's masterpiece. It is the proof, if needed, that she is more than a transgressive, avant-garde, iconic writer - she is just one of the greatest American writers, one who is able to tell us what's wrong with the world and transform our stupor into thinking." - Constance Debre
"The Four Spent the Day Together is searing politics by storytelling, a novel constructed through counterpoint as it moves among the drowned, the drowning, and the survivors of the brutal American landscape we live in now." - Siri Hustvedt
"It's really, really good. Maybe the best thing she's written." - Gary Indiana
"The intelligence and honesty and total originality of Chris Kraus make her work not just great but indispensable...I read everything Chris Kraus writes; she softens despair with her brightness, and with incredible humor, too." - Rachel Kushner
"I always so admire the work of Chris Kraus for the astringent truths contained there. The Four Spend the Day Together is no exception. What a sharp, smart, unsettling, memorable work it is." - Rick Moody
"This is an entirely new kind of novel, one that shows how helplessly connected we are to our time and to each other. It's rich, heartbreaking and powerful." - Eileen Myles
"This is a novel of the American moment by a writer whose antennae are attuned to subtle connections and strange cross-currents. Chris Kraus has a gift for making intimate things part of a pattern and for making that pattern a fresh and engaged way of dramatizing the way we live now." - Colm Tóibín
"Excellent retelling of an American nightmare with its unique Chris Kraus prose: sharp, bold, fast paced and piercingly direct. The Four Spent The Day Together will be a great read for anyone who is passionate about understanding the complexity of marginal lives and the danger of living on the edge." - Xiaolu Guo
"What a truly unique, brilliant, surprising and bold book this is... Kraus matches the elegance of Capote's In Cold Blood and his refusal of narrative or moral simplicity. She similarly paints a rich, honest picture of social class in America, and the ways in which class and circumstance constrain a life... Each story feels frank, humane and revelatory. Each life is detailed with so much compassion. I really loved the honesty of this book. I couldn't stop reading it and I will recommend it to everyone." - Rachel Connolly
"The Four Spent the Day Together is the great American novel we need right now to understand what has happened to America. To understand how we got here. This is the book for our time, just as perhaps American Psycho was the book of the 80s and 90s. It shows how it happened, how everything is linked, how the American dream slowly drifted into the American nightmare - at its core, within the American middle class. This is Chris Kraus's masterpiece. It is the proof, if needed, that she is more than a transgressive, avant-garde, iconic writer - she is just one of the greatest American writers, one who is able to tell us what's wrong with the world and transform our stupor into thinking." - Constance Debre
"The Four Spent the Day Together is searing politics by storytelling, a novel constructed through counterpoint as it moves among the drowned, the drowning, and the survivors of the brutal American landscape we live in now." - Siri Hustvedt
"It's really, really good. Maybe the best thing she's written." - Gary Indiana
"The intelligence and honesty and total originality of Chris Kraus make her work not just great but indispensable...I read everything Chris Kraus writes; she softens despair with her brightness, and with incredible humor, too." - Rachel Kushner
"I always so admire the work of Chris Kraus for the astringent truths contained there. The Four Spend the Day Together is no exception. What a sharp, smart, unsettling, memorable work it is." - Rick Moody
"This is an entirely new kind of novel, one that shows how helplessly connected we are to our time and to each other. It's rich, heartbreaking and powerful." - Eileen Myles
"This is a novel of the American moment by a writer whose antennae are attuned to subtle connections and strange cross-currents. Chris Kraus has a gift for making intimate things part of a pattern and for making that pattern a fresh and engaged way of dramatizing the way we live now." - Colm Tóibín
"Excellent retelling of an American nightmare with its unique Chris Kraus prose: sharp, bold, fast paced and piercingly direct. The Four Spent The Day Together will be a great read for anyone who is passionate about understanding the complexity of marginal lives and the danger of living on the edge." - Xiaolu Guo
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