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The new book centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into assassination. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It is logical that she presently aims to explore different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort Kraus herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is 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, assisted by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partially because of Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par