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This latest work features characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" appear throughout the narrative. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her own fresh start, as this appears a novel form of writing – observational, authentically narrative. However it reveals itself to be filled with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an creative who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the letter form brought to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – all unable to escape their histories. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to a pastoral setting. There is the narrative of the author, in the persona of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader fond of polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the central part. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the killer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl spiraling out of control in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus tells us that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par