The Maris Review, vol 76

Maris Kreizman

14 Oct 2025 — 6 min read

New releases, 10/14

What I read this week

The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus

There are so many things I want to say about this book. But let's start with this: The Four Spent the Day Together is an excellent book about how journalism cannot be objective. I know it's an autofiction-y novel, so Kraus isn't purporting to be a journalist. And yet. I think I haven't experienced a more piercing depiction of how it's impossible to see an event (in this case, a murder) without processing it through the lens of one's own experiences.

The marketing copy for the novel doesn't quite tell you what the book is, but I'm not sure there's a neat way to do that, so I don't fault the publisher. The Four Spent the Day Together is a true crime novel (which itself is a weirdass term but it worked for Truman Capote, so) in which we don't read anything about the crime or the perpetrators until we're more than halfway through the book. It's sort of the opposite of Katie Kitamura's A Separation, when a husband's disappearance gets solved halfway through the novel, but there's still a whole latter half of the novel to go. It's an uncomfortable feeling for people who might have been expecting a traditional thriller, but as experimental fiction it's riveting.

The structure makes you pay attention to all of that happened before and to see how the circumstances of the narrator's life is connected to her interest in a murder that occurred in 2019. Chris Kraus has used a fictional double named Catt Greene before, and here in The Four Spent the Day Together we get to know more about Chris/Catt. The first section of the novel is dedicated to her working class childhood, while the second section goes more into her career as an author and editor and art writer and landlord (she owns a run-down apartment complex in Albuquerque which she hopes to fix up). The book takes place around the time when her biggest novel was adapted for TV, which brought her a bit of fame (I wrote about it at the time). The second section is also about her relationships. The resident manager of the Albuquerque apartments is a man Kraus calls Paul in this book. Paul is a recovering addict who often rebounds, and who Catt eventually marries. Together they buy a home in very northern Minnesota, near to where a 2019 murder takes place.

The murder itself: I won't tell you too much except that it involves poverty, malaise, and teenagers hooked on meth and heroin. Catt/Chris doesn't editorialize. She lays out the facts of the case and leaves motivation for the reader to figure out. The clues are mostly to be found in what's presented of Catt's personal history.

The book is great. But now we have to get to the other part I wanted to talk about:

Much of the book appears to be Chris/Catt's reaction to being "canceled." Here's how Catt describes it in the novel: "A young New York-based Russian cultural writer that Catt admired brought her name back into circulation by tweeting Catt Greene is a landlord and a new generation took up the banner. She wondered if it was the proximity to poverty she allowed herself that enraged them."

The backstory, as far as I can tell, is that sometime during the pandemic, the Red Scare girls were hanging out with Gary Indiana and Gary told them that Chris Kraus owned an apartment complex. Dasha Nekrasova then tweeted something (it's gone now) about how Chris Kraus is a landlord and a slumlord. Other people on the internet followed. What a time!

Catt is partly drawn to telling the story of impoverished teenaged murderers because the people who canceled her would never dare to be fascinated by the poor and disenfranchised. But if you're canceled by a "Dirtbag-leftist-Bernie-supporter transforms into alt-right-mouthpiece-InfoWars-contrarian" does it even really count? If a tree falls in the forest, etc., etc. All I know is that a novel written to spite Dasha Nekrasova is one that I think people who subscribe to this newsletter will enjoy.

The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey

My high praise for The Book of Guilt is that it's what I had hoped the TV show Paradise would be. It presents a world just a little bit different from ours with some entirely surreal circumstances, and bit by bit it reveals how the characters got there and how the rules of the world work. It's a philosophical thriller that's perfectly constructed. Or, rather, deliberately constructed. Which implies that there are many thrillers that are haphazardly constructed, and that's exactly what I wanted to imply. What I'm trying to say is that there are so many sloppily made films and TV shows and books that could be great if only someone/anyone paid more attention to details, and The Book of Guilt is a reminder of how excellent a dystopian mystery can be when it actually makes sense.

A Streisand Effect Opportunity

I do not claim to understand the ins and outs of UK libel laws. I know that they heavily favor the rich and powerful, and that Americans should be glad for however much of the First Amendment is left.

I also know that HarperCollins UK lawyered up hard before the publication of Andrew Lownie's book about Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein and pedophilia and sexual assault (in the news today we learn that Prince Andrew told Epstein that "we're in this together" after a photo of him with a teenaged Virginia Giuffre circulated widely in 2011). Michael Wolff, who I don't always trust but who apparently has a lot of Epstein dirt, said that in the book Lownie claims that Epstein had sex with Melania before she met Trump, and that Epstein is the one who introduced them. These are not widely explosive claims. They've been fodder for gossip for a long time.

So sure, the Trumps sue. They always sue. But they have better luck suing UK publishers. Harper UK removes the passages in question and apologizes.

This is fine and not all that exciting except for one fact: the CEO of Harper UK (and Eddie's brother) Charlie Redmayne, had resigned suddenly at almost the exact same time. The UK publishing publication The Bookseller muses that the resignation could be for another reason: there's an S&S job here in the States that Redmayne might be right for. But holy hell if by bringing a libel claim the Trumps were able to get a CEO to resign, we are in big trouble.

I really hope that Redmayne announces some cushy new job at some other Rupert Murdoch-owned company sometime soon. Otherwise I think we're in scary new territory, with the Trumps dictating which truths are allowed to appear in books.