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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

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

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par