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This latest work is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, attempting to leave behind substance abuse or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into conflict. Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "new beginning", making it willfully cynical 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, the author herself is embarking on her own fresh start, because this seems a different type of work – fact-based, truly literary. However it proves to be filled with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as her previous works.

From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, structured as missives to a distant beloved, transforming confessional female writing from humiliation into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels did not possess the power and directness that the correspondence format imparted to the voice of I Love Dick. It didn't help was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was much discussion on real estate deals. It follows that she presently aims to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to other people's stories, at a period in which she states that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Multiple Generations, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, relocating from the New York borough to rural Connecticut. Then there is the narrative of the author, in the persona of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the belated success of I Love Dick, the ascent of a political figure, and her substance-dependent spouse Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a town largely deserted by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the initial segment.

As someone who reads who favors precise prose of the style that the author often disregards, I was won over by the novelistic voice of the initial part. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that allows space for small details, like the pail that the young Catt pries out of frozen water at the start of the story, helped by her beloved father. "I found an ice toy!" she declares; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the ambiguous meanings of language tumbling in their mouths like piece candy". Kraus writes Emma's story with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not entirely her own."

Frustration and Disruption

I was bound to become frustrated when I wished this fresh tone could last out the book. The author states here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction readers like me have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her inspiration author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works returns in the central part. Catt Greene is attempting to do up three dozen dilapidated units in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul curb his addiction. She is overwhelmed as Paul transitions between underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a environment driven by the anger and fear that underpins an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her occupation changed from "author" to "real estate holder" on a reference site. She still gives the impression to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she says that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her social media opponents would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Killing Story

So then we come to the actual killing – and the titular day spent by the deceased with the murderer and his companions. The author possesses great source material, and knows hour by hour what transpired when the victim 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 with her companions, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being murdered by Brittney's boyfriend a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

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 responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – another bright, bullied girl derailing in a struggling, neglected community. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she fails to enact these dialogues. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that her narrative ends almost mid-par