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This latest work is populated with protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par