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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 violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene 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 curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet 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 in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par