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The new book features individuals pursuing new beginnings, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", rendering it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, since this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, authentically narrative. But then it proves to be filled with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who entered the literary world unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, elevating personal female narrative from abjection into rebellion. She continued writing, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the epistolary style imparted to the tone of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her position as a renegade artist who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their backgrounds. The book includes the story of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one lost young man by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to precise prose of the variety that Kraus tends to eschew, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books comes back in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband control his drinking. She feels helpless as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that powers a political win. A significant portion discusses about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her professional designation altered from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she says that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the killer and his companions. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she marketed explicit images. He sought a sexual encounter but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, loitering fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards responsible documentation and reckless transgression wrestle in this part. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels oddly unfinished, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par