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The new book centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the pail that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par