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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par