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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par