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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three 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 position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par