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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par