The Four Spent the Day Together

By: Chris Kraus

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

“Chris Kraus reinvents the true-crime novel.” —The New Yorker

“[Kraus’s] version of a classic American tragedy…a dazzling, refined work, formally and otherwise—at once tracking the far-reaching tentacles of addiction, and the trajectory of an almost unrecognizable America.” —Bookforum

A critically acclaimed novel from Chris Kraus—author of the classic I Love Dick, a cult literary figure, and one of autofiction’s truest innovators—about addiction, violence, and the American underclass.

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.

Critic reviews

"Narrator Cassandra Campbell’s natural resonant voice is the perfect choice for this fact-paced thriller. It’s a shocking tale about three teenagers in northern Minnesota who shoot and kill an older man after spending hours with him, and of the neighbor, Catt Green, who takes it upon herself to figure out how such a horrific thing could actually occur. Power, class, tension, and brutality are the main themes at the heart of this mystery. The gift of Campbell’s golden voice and how she is able to switch between characters effortlessly will keep any audiophile on the edge of their seat. A worthy choice for anyone with a stomach for cruelty."

Addiction overload

The beginning was a real drag. Endless repetition of achoholic addition and relapses and enablement
Rest of book filled with losers and more addiction. Picking an area filled with drug addled youth and looking for a deeper context was a waste of time.
Problem clearly too widespread to solve and story lost any real interest as outcome was reveled early. Non of the perps the least bit interesting or sympathetic
Total waste of time.

Doesn't work well as an audiobook.

It doesn't work well as an audiobook because the story is fragmented between many characters and if your attention wanders, it is easy to get lost. It feels self indulgent and is boring most of the time.

I love reading Krauss

Did not expect it to be a "not all landlords" novel. It is a bit jumpy but trully Kraus wrotes so well, I glided through the book. Bless her passionate and inteligent heart.