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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par