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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par