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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative 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 histories. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par