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The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". The author narrates the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par