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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

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, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she claims that current political era turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par