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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par