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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of a couple named 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 protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par