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The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par