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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par