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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. The author frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this presents as a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive 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 role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – none able to break free from their backgrounds. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors honed writing of the style that the author usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for trivial aspects, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par