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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par