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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is 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 partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par