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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" are scattered across the text. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. However it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format infused into 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 housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". She tells the tale of Emma with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who comes alive in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par