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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the story. At the same time, the author herself appears to be undertaking her personal new beginning, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to experiment with fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim 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 lost young man by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind the author herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "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 interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she resents the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par