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This latest work features protagonists pursuing clean slates, struggling to escape substance abuse or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into conflict. Kraus frequently uses the phrase "fresh start", rendering it intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Sentences like "He aimed to start over" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, she seems to be making her individual reinvention, because this appears a different type of work – documentarian, authentically narrative. But then it reveals itself to be laden with the familiar conflicts and approaches as her previous works.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus began as an artist who transitioned to writing unintentionally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, converting intimate women's literature from self-debasement into assassination. She continued writing, but the following three fascinating and rebarbative novels missed the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the tone of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her role as a maverick maker who had turned into a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It follows that she currently desires to explore fresh narrative sources, turning outward to external narratives, at a moment when she claims that current political era renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, One Unescapable Past

The Four Spent the Day Together is structured in three parts, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. We encounter the story of characters Emma and Jasper, representations of her own mother and father, moving from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. There is the account of Kraus, in the guise of protagonist Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse her husband Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one lost young man by another in a community long abandoned by progressive politics only a short distance from the protagonist's home in a remote part of Minnesota.

From my perspective as a reader fond of refined literature of the sort Kraus typically rejects, I was seduced by the novelistic voice of the opening part.

As a reader drawn to precise prose of the style that the author usually avoids, I was seduced by the literary tone of the initial part. It possesses a novel degree of detail that allows space for minutiae, like the pail that the protagonist as a child pries out of frozen water at the beginning of the narrative, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like hard candy". Kraus writes Emma's narrative with interest and closeness. "It seemed to Emma she had entered a dream – not precisely her dream."

Letdown and Fragmentation

I was fated to feel let down when I hoped this new voice could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she dislikes the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the messy artistic approach she has in common with her hero author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels returns in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between the Midwest and the West Coast, unsuccessful in assisting Paul manage his alcohol use. She experiences powerlessness as Paul cycles through underfunded jobs as an addiction therapist in a world driven by the anger and fear that drives a political win. There are several pages about Catt's social media ostracism on social media, her professional designation altered from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. The author still appears to care a little too much about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before leaving Minnesota, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the perpetrator and his associates. The author possesses great source material, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after meeting her on an app where she offered adult photos. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day alongside her friends, mooching around getting his car mended and funding treats and narcotics, before being shot by Brittney's partner a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt develops an obsession by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that the author's conflicting impulses towards accurate chronicling and audacious rule-breaking clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to explore more thoroughly her individual preoccupations here. The most interesting character is Brittney herself, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual going off the rails in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels strangely incomplete, to the point that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par