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The Four Spent the Day Together is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative 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 kept producing books, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par