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The new book features characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", rendering it deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself seems to be making her own fresh start, because this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be packed with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format infused into the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had turned into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to try out different types of content, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that current political era makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, transitioning from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader fond of refined literature of the kind Kraus herself typically rejects, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that the author tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the bucket that the youthful Catt frees from the ice at the beginning of the narrative, aided by her adored dad. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the nation that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the homicide in question – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, wandering about getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. But I'd have liked her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par