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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par