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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

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 readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl 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. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par