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This latest work features individuals seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Examples include "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an creative who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the power and directness that the correspondence format infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she presently aims to experiment with new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader attracted to polished prose of the kind Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the opening segment. There is a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the referenced day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his friends. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par