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This latest work features protagonists seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the narrative. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she states that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the kind Kraus herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this new voice could continue through the novel. The author states here that she dislikes the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the anger and fear that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide 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 see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus utilizes great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par