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This latest work is populated with characters seeking clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, truly literary. Yet it proves to be laden with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who entered the literary world somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels did not possess the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. There is the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that makes room for small details, like the container that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could last out the book. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "writer" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his friends. The author possesses great source material, and details moment by moment what happened when Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering having his vehicle repaired and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through Catt's identification with her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par