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This latest work is populated with protagonists chasing after new beginnings, attempting to leave behind addictions or toxic relationships, only to find hope curdling into aggression. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the story. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, since this seems a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as past novels.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as letters to an unreceptive lover, transforming personal female narrative from abjection into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the shock and immediacy that the correspondence format brought to the narrative voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that contemporary political climate renders personal narrative obsolete.

Multiple Generations, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning multiple eras – none able to break free from their histories. There is the narrative about characters Emma and Jasper, representations of the author's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to a pastoral setting. Then there is the story of Kraus herself, in the character of protagonist Catt Greene, grappling with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, 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 locality mostly forsaken by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

As a reader attracted to polished prose of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial part. It exhibits a fresh level of observation that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child dislodges from ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a nice toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with curiosity and intimacy. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not hers, exactly."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the unpolished style she has in common with her idol Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between Minnesota and LA, unable to aid her husband control his drinking. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her occupation changed from "writer" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. She still gives the impression to care a little too much about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the nation that her Twitter detractors would fail to comprehend, would not even perceive".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the murder itself – and the eponymous day experienced by the deceased with the killer and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when Brandon came to visit Brittney after meeting her on an app where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around getting his car mended and covering the cost of food and substances, before being murdered by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for fits of anger.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

The protagonist becomes fixated by the narrative, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards ethical reporting and reckless transgression tussle in this section. But I'd have liked her to explore more thoroughly her personal fixations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par