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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on protagonists seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par