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The new book features individuals pursuing new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the narrative. And yet, the author herself appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, because this seems a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, transforming intimate women's literature from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It makes sense that she now wants to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she claims that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in rural Minnesota.

As a reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the variety that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she says; "a nice toy", he answers, "the nuanced interpretations of terms circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this fresh tone could continue through the novel. The author states here that she resents the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, unable to aid her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society propelled by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. On one occasion she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the murdered individual with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems amiably to have occupied the day alongside her friends, loitering having his vehicle repaired and paying for snacks and drugs, before being shot by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt gets obsessed by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels strangely incomplete, to the point that her narrative ends almost mid-par