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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par