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This latest work centers on protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a new kind of book – fact-based, truly literary. However it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the opening part.

As someone who reads who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the pleasure readers like me have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par