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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par