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The Four Spent the Day Together features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative 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 much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par