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This latest work features characters chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – observational, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a time when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the middle section. The protagonist is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she states that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par