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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she now wants to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "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 last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point 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 online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par