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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par