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This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering three generations – each trapped by their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who appreciates honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". She tells Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her online critics would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par