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This latest work centers on characters chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to see hope turn into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "fresh start", making it willfully cynical through its repetitions. Phrases such as "He was ready for a new beginning" and "They decided to make a fresh start" recur in the narrative. Meanwhile, she is embarking on her individual reinvention, as this presents as a novel form of writing – documentarian, authentically narrative. However it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and approaches as earlier books.

From Accidental Writer to Cult Classic

Chris Kraus began as an artist who became a writer somewhat by chance with her 1997 groundbreaking book I Love Dick, which was composed of letters to an unreceptive lover, converting confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She kept producing books, but the three subsequent engaging and challenging novels did not possess the impact and rawness that the letter form infused into the narrative voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a nonconformist creator who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on real estate deals. It makes sense that she now wants to explore fresh narrative sources, looking outwards to external narratives, at a moment when she asserts that Trumpian politics renders personal narrative unnecessary.

Several Eras, Collective Unavoidable Background

The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, spanning three generations – all unable to escape their pasts. There is the story of characters Emma and Jasper, versions of Kraus's parents, relocating from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the narrative of the author, in the character of Catt Greene, grappling with the delayed acclaim of I Love Dick, the rise of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the narrative of a homicide of one directionless individual by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only 80 miles from Catt's rural residence in a remote part of Minnesota.

For this reader drawn to polished prose of the type Kraus typically rejects, I was captivated by the literary tone of the initial segment.

Being a reader drawn to crafted language of the kind that Kraus herself tends to eschew, I was captivated by the literary tone of the opening segment. It possesses a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for small details, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the opening of the book, assisted by her beloved father. "I discovered a frozen plaything!" she declares; "a nice toy", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words tumbling in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's story with interest and closeness. "Emma experienced a dreamlike sensation – not precisely her dream."

Frustration and Disruption

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 pleasure those who appreciate polished prose have gotten from I Love Dick; she's devoted to disjunction, to the untidy aesthetics she has in common with her idol author Kathy Acker, and the blankness and repetitiveness of her earlier works reasserts itself in the second segment. The protagonist is attempting to do up multiple decrepit residences in the city's most challenging districts while traveling between the Midwest and the West Coast, unable to aid Paul control his drinking. She feels helpless as Paul moves between low-resource employment as an recovery specialist in a world fueled by the anger and fear that drives an electoral success. There are several pages about the protagonist facing cancellation on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "writer" to "real estate holder" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to be overly concerned about this. In a moment she remarks that she's looking into the killing so that before exiting the region, "she could potentially understand something about an America that her online critics would be unable to grasp, would not even see".

The Homicide Account

Thus we arrive to the murder itself – and the referenced day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his companions. Kraus has excellent raw material, and details moment by moment what occurred as Brandon came to meet Brittney after connecting via an application where she marketed explicit images. He anticipated intimacy but seems affably to have spent the day in the company of her associates, mooching around having his vehicle repaired and funding treats and narcotics, before being killed by gunfire by her romantic interest Micah – a individual with mental health challenges who has repeatedly received inpatient care for violent rage.

Preoccupation and Open Ends

Catt develops an obsession by the account, and I was intrigued by the way that her twin drives towards responsible documentation and daring boundary-pushing clash in this segment. Yet I wished her to go further into her own obsessions here. The standout figure is the character Brittney, who becomes vivid partly through the protagonist's connection to her – a similarly gifted, tormented individual derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt converses with Brittney in jail, but she doesn't dramatise these conversations. This entire part feels curiously unresolved, to the point that Kraus's narration ends almost mid-par