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This latest work centers on individuals chasing after new beginnings, trying to break free from substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. At the same time, she is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from self-debasement into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

Being a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

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 is annoyed by the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "property owner" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion 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 online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to delve deeper into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is 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 doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par