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This latest work centers on characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par