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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" 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 looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character 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. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par