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The new book features protagonists pursuing new beginnings, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the sort Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par