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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the story. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it turns out to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

The writer was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par