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This latest work is populated with characters pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or toxic relationships, only to witness hope devolve into violence. Chris Kraus frequently uses the phrase "new beginning", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He aimed to start over" and "They decided to make a fresh start" are scattered across the story. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this presents as a novel form of writing – fact-based, truly literary. Yet it turns out to be packed with the familiar conflicts and styles as earlier books.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who transitioned to writing almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, elevating personal female narrative from self-debasement into defiance. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a nonconformist creator who had evolved into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on housing investments. It makes sense that she presently aims to explore new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a period in which she states that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Multiple Generations, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, spanning three generations – none able to break free from their histories. We encounter the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, versions of the author's parents, moving from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the story of the murder of one directionless individual by another in a community largely deserted by liberal ideals only a brief drive from the protagonist's home in the Minnesota countryside.

As a reader attracted to refined literature of the type the author herself often avoids, I was seduced by the narrative style of the first section.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the opening of the book, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this different style could persist to the end. Kraus notes here that she dislikes the enjoyment readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to fragmentation, to the unpolished style she shares with her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the void and recurrence of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help her husband manage his alcohol use. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. A significant portion discusses about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her listed profession modified from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to be overly concerned about this. At one point she says that she's investigating the murder so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even perceive".

The Homicide Account

So then we come to the actual killing – and the eponymous day passed by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He sought a sexual encounter but seems affably to have spent the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has repeatedly received inpatient care for aggressive outbursts.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in prison, but she fails to enact these dialogues. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par