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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. 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 nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par