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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par