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The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind drugs or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", making it intentionally weary through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this presents as a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as her previous works.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, converting personal female narrative from humiliation into rebellion. She continued writing, but the next trio of engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics turns intimate literature redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering several time periods – all unable to escape their pasts. We encounter the story of Emma and Jasper, based on her own mother and father, moving from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community largely deserted by progressive politics only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the style that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was seduced by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the unpolished style she echoes from her hero author Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works returns in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while moving between Minnesota and LA, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul cycles through poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. The author possesses compelling foundational content, and details moment by moment what happened when the victim 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 alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in detention, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par