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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container 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 declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says 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 social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par