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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide 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 drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par