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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems 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 might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par