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This latest work is populated with characters chasing after clean slates, struggling to escape drugs or harmful partnerships, only to see hope turn into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", transforming it into intentionally weary through recurring use. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They opted for a clean break" are scattered across the narrative. And yet, the author herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, as this appears a different type of work – observational, authentically narrative. Yet it reveals itself to be laden with the same dilemmas and styles as past novels.

From Chance Novelist to Renowned Book

Chris Kraus was originally an visual artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 seminal work I Love Dick, structured as epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating intimate women's literature from self-debasement into defiance. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of compelling and abrasive novels lacked the shock and immediacy that the epistolary style infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. Compounding this was her identity as a maverick maker who had turned into a major property owner, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It follows that she now wants to experiment with different types of content, directing her gaze to external narratives, at a period in which she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing redundant.

Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History

The Four Spent the Day Together is divided into three sections, encompassing multiple eras – all unable to escape their histories. There is the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on Kraus's parents, moving from the urban environment to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the persona of Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her partner struggling with addiction Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a town long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a brief drive from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

For this reader fond of honed writing of the type the author herself typically rejects, I was captivated by the narrative style of the first section.

As a reader who favors precise prose of the kind that Kraus usually avoids, I was captivated by the novelistic voice of the opening segment. It exhibits a novel degree of detail that accommodates minutiae, like the bucket that the protagonist as a child frees from the ice at the opening of the book, helped by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she exclaims; "a lovely toy", he replies, "the elliptical meanings of words circulating in their speech like piece candy". She tells Emma's story with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not hers, exactly."

Frustration and Disruption

I was fated to feel let down when I expected this different style could persist to the end. Kraus says here that she is annoyed by the pleasure audiences such as myself have taken from I Love Dick; she's committed to disjunction, to the unpolished style she has in common with her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt Greene is trying to renovate 36 run-down apartments in the most troubled areas of Albuquerque while shuttling between Minnesota and LA, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse cycles through poorly supported positions as an recovery specialist in a society fueled by the anger and fear that powers Trump's victory. Multiple pages are devoted about the protagonist facing cancellation on a platform, her listed profession modified from "author" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to care a little too much about this. At one point she states that she's researching the homicide so that before exiting the region, "she may grasp something about an the United States that her online critics would fail to comprehend, would not even see".

The Murder Narrative

Then we reach to the actual killing – and the referenced day passed by the victim with the murderer and his associates. Kraus has compelling foundational content, and reconstructs step by step what transpired when the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she offered adult photos. He was hoping for sex but seems amiably to have occupied the day with her companions, loitering fixing his automobile and covering the cost of food and substances, before being shot by her romantic interest Micah – a young, mentally ill man who has frequently been hospitalised for violent rage.

Obsession and Unfinished Business

Catt gets obsessed by the narrative, and I found myself captivated by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The compelling persona is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to Catt seeing herself in her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus tells us that the protagonist communicates with Brittney in detention, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. The whole section feels curiously unresolved, to the degree that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par