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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates 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 different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, 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