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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par