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The new book features characters chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus often employs the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this seems a new kind of book – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be filled with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating intimate women's literature from abjection into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was significant attention on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, looking outwards to the experiences of others, at a time when she asserts that current political era turns intimate literature obsolete.

Three Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. There is the tale of a couple named Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, transitioning from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of refined literature of the sort the author herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to honed writing of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was won over by the literary tone of the initial part. There is a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates small details, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he replies, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disjunction, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books returns in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the hostility and dread that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her professional designation altered from "author" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the actual killing – and the titular day passed by the deceased with the murderer and his friends. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what happened when a man named Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who comes alive partly through Catt's identification with her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that her narrative ends almost mid-par