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The new book features characters pursuing fresh starts, trying to break free from drugs or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and aesthetics as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her position as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to honed writing of the type Kraus herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors crafted language of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. 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 opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this fresh tone could persist to the end. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide 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 overlook entirely".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par