This book is a revelation.
In The Four Spent the Day Together, Chris Kraus unravels the chaos of modern America—not through grand pronouncements, but through an intricately layered story that echoes with real pain, real questions, and real consequence. There’s a quiet brilliance in how she lets the parallels unfold: the lives of teens caught in a violent spiral, the narrator's own unraveling, and the systems that bind and fail them all.

Kraus doesn’t just write about addiction—she examines the culture that allows it to grow unchecked, the blurred lines between help and harm, love and dependence, privilege and survival. This isn’t a tidy morality tale. It’s raw, unnerving, and jagged. The blend of autobiography, found texts, COVID-era reporting, and official records gives the narrative a real time feeling. You’re not just turning pages—you're slowing moving to the end times of American Culture.

This is not an easy book. But it’s unforgettable. Kraus moves between memoir, reportage, and fiction with such ease that the boundaries collapse, and when it lands, it doesn’t just break your heart. It leaves you staring at the pieces.

For fans of hybrid narrative, social critique, and deeply personal storytelling, The Four Spent the Day Together is a must-read. It’s one of the most devastating and important novels I’ve read in a long time.

#Scribner #TheFourSpentTheDayTogether #ChrisKraus #LiteraryFiction #HybridNarrative #AddictionNarratives #TrueCrimeAndFiction

A hauntingly stark look at families, poverty, childhood in the past and present, and overall what it means to be different, The Four Spent the Day Together is told in 3 seperate (although entertwined) parts. While the writing is evocative, the walls of text and no dialogue tags made this a bit of slog to get through. The story mainly focuses on Catt and her upbringing, then moves on to her relationship to Paul, really digging deep into her childhood trauma and behavior which then seeps itself into her relationships.

The last third of this book is the titular "four" who spend the the day together, but to be honest, there's a lot stuff going on that then never goes anywhere. The other con is that there are way too many characters who are just thrown in to beef up the world building but it feels overdone. I'm also not entirely sure why Catt's story is so much of the book's focus to then pivot in the last third and have her be the vehicle to which we learn about these teenagers, but maybe it will work for some readers.

Overall, the story and the way it was told just fell flat for me and didn't live up to the hype of the blurb.