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The new book features protagonists pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par