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The new book is populated with individuals pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the text. At the same time, Kraus herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par