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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally 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 persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par