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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative 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 pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par