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This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that makes room for trivial aspects, like the pail that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling 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."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par