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The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through its repetitions. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition 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 directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped 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 sweet treats". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par