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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then 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 rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named 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, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par