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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par