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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much 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 social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par