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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer was originally an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par