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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par