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This latest work features characters pursuing clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her personal new beginning, since this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her position as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – each trapped by their histories. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

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

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could continue through the novel. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day spent by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par