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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with protagonists pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, 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