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The new book is populated with individuals seeking fresh starts, trying to break free from substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, she seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a new kind of book – observational, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the recurring issues and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to explore different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a period in which she states that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the account of Kraus, 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 partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she declares; "a great plaything", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She is overwhelmed as her spouse cycles through low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, wandering about having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to go further into her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par