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The new book is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that Kraus often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion 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 fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile 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 frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par