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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning 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 account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par