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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par