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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par