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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control 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 whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par