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This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out different types of content, turning outward to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par