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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par