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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems 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 might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile 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 frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par