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This latest work is populated with protagonists seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into aggression. The author often employs the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it proves to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – all unable to escape their histories. There is the narrative about Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day in the company of her associates, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partially because of Catt's identification with her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par