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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par