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The new book centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader fond of honed writing of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when 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 appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par