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This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par