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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par