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The new book centers on individuals seeking new beginnings, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. At the same time, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style brought to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the late recognition of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. Finally the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the style that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. There is a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unsuccessful in assisting Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, wandering about getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par