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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par