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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion 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 online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied 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 Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to 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 detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par