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The Four Spent the Day Together centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors 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 murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par