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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source 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 alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par