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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated 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. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par