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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making 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. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

The writer began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this 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 follows that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par