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This latest work features characters seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "clean slate", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the text. At the same time, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a novel form of writing – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. Yet it proves to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Kraus was originally an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, converting confessional female writing from abjection into defiance. She continued writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had evolved into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with different types of content, looking outwards to other people's stories, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, encompassing three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. The book includes the story of a couple named Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, relocating from the New York borough to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the persona of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. Finally the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the first section.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that the author often disregards, I was captivated by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a great plaything", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech 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 bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the hostility and dread that powers an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day spent by the deceased with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when Brandon came to see Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par