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This latest work features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the anger and fear that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par