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The Four Spent the Day Together features individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, since this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par