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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par