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This latest work features individuals chasing after fresh starts, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out different types of content, looking outwards to external narratives, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the tale of Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. The third thread involves the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

Being a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her previous novels reasserts itself in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a environment fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "real estate holder" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when a man named Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was intrigued 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 delve deeper into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par