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The new book centers on characters seeking fresh starts, attempting to leave behind drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. The author repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into deliberately jaded through recurring use. Examples include "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, Kraus herself is embarking on her own fresh start, as this presents as a different type of work – documentarian, truly literary. However it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Iconic Work

Chris Kraus began as an artist who entered the literary world almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from self-debasement into defiance. She continued writing, but the following three engaging and challenging novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was significant attention on housing investments. It follows that she presently aims to try out new kinds of material, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that current political era renders personal narrative redundant.

Three Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, covering three generations – none able to break free from their pasts. We encounter the tale of characters Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the Bronx to the Connecticut countryside. Then there is the account of Kraus, in the character of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her addict husband her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a locality mostly forsaken by liberal ideals only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in rural Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader attracted to honed writing of the sort the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the first section.

As someone who reads drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself usually avoids, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for trivial aspects, like the container that the youthful Catt pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a lovely toy", he responds, "the nuanced interpretations of terms tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". Kraus writes the tale of Emma with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Disappointment and Disjunction

I was fated to feel let down when I wished this different style could persist to the end. The author states here that she dislikes the satisfaction readers like me have derived from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels comes back in the second segment. The protagonist is trying to renovate three dozen dilapidated units in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, failing to help Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a world propelled by the rage and anxiety that powers an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on social media, her listed profession modified from "novelist" to "landlord" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she says that she's investigating the murder so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Murder Narrative

Thus we arrive to the homicide in question – and the eponymous day experienced by the murdered individual with the perpetrator and his companions. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, loitering getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the story, and I was fascinated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking wrestle in this part. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who gains dimension partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in prison, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels oddly unfinished, to the extent that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par