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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around 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 entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened 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, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par