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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par