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This latest work centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her own fresh start, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could last out the book. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the anger and fear that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day experienced by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. Kraus utilizes great source material, and details moment by moment what transpired when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par