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The new book features protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it turns out to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer was originally an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the sort Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par