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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par