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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment 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 online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par