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This latest work centers on individuals pursuing fresh starts, struggling to escape addictions or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", rendering it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this appears a different type of work – fact-based, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the recurring issues and styles as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Iconic Work

The writer began as an visual artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels missed the power and directness that the letter form infused into the voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a large-scale low-rent landlord, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It is logical that she currently desires to explore new kinds of material, directing her gaze to the experiences of others, at a moment when she states that contemporary political climate makes confessional writing unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering multiple eras – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the urban environment to a pastoral setting. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her partner struggling with addiction her husband Paul. The third thread involves the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a community long abandoned by liberal ideals only a brief drive from Catt's rural residence in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the kind Kraus tends to eschew, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors honed writing of the style that the author tends to eschew, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates trivial aspects, like the bucket that the youthful Catt dislodges from ice at the start of the story, helped by her cherished parent. "Look, an ice toy!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the ambiguous meanings of language rolling around in their mouths like hard candy". The author narrates Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was bound to become frustrated when I expected this fresh tone could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's committed to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she shares with her inspiration writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the middle section. The protagonist is trying to renovate multiple decrepit residences in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between two different states, failing to help Paul control his drinking. She is overwhelmed as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives Trump's victory. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "landlord" on the online encyclopedia. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. At one point she says that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

So then we come to the murder itself – and the eponymous day passed by the deceased with the perpetrator and his friends. Kraus has great source material, and reconstructs step by step what occurred as a man named Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but appears congenially to have passed the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and paying for snacks and drugs, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the account, and I was intrigued 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 go further into her personal fixations here. The standout figure is Brittney, who gains dimension partly through Catt seeing herself in her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. This entire part feels strangely incomplete, to the degree that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par