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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par