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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par