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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the kind that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing 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's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par