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The new book features individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" appear throughout the text. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the same dilemmas and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus started out as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels lacked the power and directness that the letter form imparted to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a maverick maker who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on property transactions. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she claims that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative obsolete.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, spanning multiple eras – all unable to escape their backgrounds. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband a man named Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the type the author herself often avoids, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to crafted language of the variety that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the first section. There is a novel degree of detail that makes room for trivial aspects, like the container that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the start of the story, helped by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the enjoyment audiences such as myself have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the rage and anxiety that underpins a political win. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt's social media ostracism on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she says that she's researching the homicide so that before leaving Minnesota, "she might be able to learn something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day passed by the victim with the killer and his companions. The author possesses compelling foundational content, 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 anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the account, and I was fascinated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards ethical reporting and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The most interesting character is the character Brittney, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par