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The new book features characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this presents as a different type of work – observational, truly literary. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, 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 community largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par