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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par