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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par