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This latest work features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual 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 oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par