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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par