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The new book centers on individuals pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He could make a fresh start" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the text. Meanwhile, the author herself seems to be making her individual reinvention, as this seems a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus started out as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, converting personal female narrative from abjection into defiance. She kept producing books, but the following three compelling and abrasive novels lacked the impact and rawness that the letter form brought to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was much discussion on housing investments. It follows that she now wants to try out fresh narrative sources, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a time when she states that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering multiple eras – all unable to escape their pasts. The book includes the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the late recognition of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one directionless individual by another in a town largely deserted by liberal ideals only a short distance from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader drawn to honed writing of the kind Kraus often avoids, I was enchanted by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the container that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". She tells the tale of Emma with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was destined to be disappointed when I expected this new voice could continue through the novel. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her hero Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her past books reasserts itself in the middle section. Catt is working on refurbishing multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while shuttling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an substance abuse counselor in a world fueled by the rage and anxiety that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on social media, her occupation changed from "novelist" to "property owner" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an America that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. The author possesses excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she marketed explicit images. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day with her companions, wandering about fixing his automobile and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by Brittney's partner Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards accurate chronicling and daring boundary-pushing tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who becomes vivid partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman going off the rails in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par