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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par