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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the story. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

The writer began as an creative who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She persisted as a writer, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering three generations – each trapped by their histories. The book includes the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of protagonist Catt Greene, confronting the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the type the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader who appreciates precise prose of the style that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels comes back in the central part. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who comes alive partially because of Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par