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The new book centers on characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus often employs the phrase "new beginning", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the text. Meanwhile, she appears to be undertaking her individual reinvention, as this appears a new kind of book – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

The writer started out as an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, made up of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting intimate women's literature from humiliation into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the impact and rawness that the correspondence format imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a period in which she asserts that Trumpian politics makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, covering multiple eras – each trapped by their backgrounds. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of her own mother and father, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. There is the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her addict husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial segment.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the literary tone of the first section. There is a fresh level of observation that makes room for small details, like the container that the young Catt dislodges from ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the pleasure audiences such as myself have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt Greene is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an substance abuse counselor in a environment propelled by the rage and anxiety that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on a platform, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the nation that her online critics would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what transpired when Brandon came to visit Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that her twin drives towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression clash in this segment. However, I would have preferred her to explore more thoroughly her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par