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This latest work centers on characters pursuing clean slates, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the text. At the same time, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the deceased with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par