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The new book is populated with characters seeking new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par