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This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" 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 could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par