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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics 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 attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when 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 affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par