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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates 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 bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par