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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par