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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point 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 be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par