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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, because this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – each trapped by their histories. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par