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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the story. And yet, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par