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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par