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This latest work centers on characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par