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The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that the author usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par