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This latest work is populated with individuals pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

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 enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par