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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par