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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par