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This latest work centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. At the same time, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she currently desires to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she claims that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing redundant.

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. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a fresh level of observation that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books comes back in the central part. The protagonist is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par