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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is 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 drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par