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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

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. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par