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This latest work centers on protagonists chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

The writer started out as an creative who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a period in which she asserts that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to refined literature of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms rolling around in their mouths like hard 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 destined to be disappointed when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. In a moment she says that she's investigating the murder so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive in part due to Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par