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The new book is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the sort Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who appreciates crafted language of the style that Kraus often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states 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 see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par