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The new book is populated with individuals chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the story. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this appears a novel form of writing – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

The writer started out as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates minutiae, like the pail that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting her husband manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who comes alive partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par