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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par