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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion 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 Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par