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The new book is populated with individuals seeking clean slates, trying to break free from addictions or harmful partnerships, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it deliberately jaded through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They chose to begin anew" appear throughout the text. At the same time, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, since this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it reveals itself to be packed with the same dilemmas and aesthetics as past novels.

From Unplanned Author to Renowned Book

Kraus began as an visual artist who became a writer unintentionally with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of missives to a distant beloved, elevating confessional female writing from humiliation into assassination. She continued writing, but the three subsequent compelling and abrasive novels missed the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her role as a renegade artist who had turned into a major property owner, so there was significant attention on property transactions. It is logical that she currently desires to experiment with new kinds of material, looking outwards 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 divided into three sections, encompassing several time periods – none able to break free from their histories. The book includes the narrative about a couple named Emma and Jasper, representations of Kraus's parents, transitioning from the Bronx to rural Connecticut. Additionally the account of Kraus, in the guise of a figure named Catt Greene, reckoning with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. The third thread involves the narrative of a homicide of one troubled youth by another in a community mostly forsaken by progressive politics only 80 miles from Catt's cottage in the Minnesota countryside.

From my perspective as a reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was seduced by the narrative style of the opening part.

Being a reader who appreciates precise prose of the kind that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the first section. It possesses a fresh level of observation that makes room for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, aided by her cherished parent. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she says; "a great plaything", he answers, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like hard candy". She tells Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not entirely her own."

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 resents the enjoyment those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's dedicated to disruption, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her hero writer Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her previous novels reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is working on refurbishing 36 run-down apartments in Albuquerque's worst neighbourhoods while shuttling between two different states, unsuccessful in assisting her husband curb his addiction. She feels helpless as Paul transitions between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world driven by the anger and fear that underpins Trump's victory. There are several pages about Catt being cancelled on social media, her occupation changed from "writer" to "property owner" on a reference site. Kraus still seems to invest excessive emotion about this. On one occasion she states that she's looking into the killing so that before departing the state, "she might be able to learn something about an America that her Twitter detractors would not understand, would overlook entirely".

The Killing Story

Then we reach to the homicide in question – and the titular day spent by the murdered individual with the killer and his associates. Kraus utilizes excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as the victim Brandon came to meet Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. 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 Brittney's partner Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has frequently been hospitalised for fits of anger.

Fascination and Incompletion

The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, 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. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is Brittney herself, who gains dimension in part due to the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual spiraling out of control in a troubled, forgotten town. The author informs us that Catt speaks to Brittney in detention, 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