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This latest work centers on protagonists seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par