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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par