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This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the epistolary style infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a maverick maker who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates 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 different style could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par