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The new book features individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It is logical that she now wants to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence 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 mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par