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This latest work features protagonists chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, 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 repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par