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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states 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 hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par