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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 witness hope devolve into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. However it turns out to be laden with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named 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 story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par