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The Four Spent the Day Together features characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par