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The new book centers on individuals chasing after fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her personal new beginning, as this appears a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a renegade artist who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It makes sense that she currently desires to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. There is the story of Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to polished prose of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader who favors crafted language of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this new voice could last out the book. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par