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This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone 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 messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated 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 individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par